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THE WAR PLOTTERS 
OF WALL STREET 



BY 

CHARLES A. COLLMAN 



THE FATHERLAND CORPORATION 

NEW YORK 
1915 






Copyright, 1 91 5, by 
THE FATHERLAND CORPORATION 






\ 



V 

\ 

i 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PACE 

I. Young Morgan, Britain's Munitions Agent ..... 7 

II. The War Stock Gamblers 16 

III. The Curtain Raised on Wall Street's Underworld . . 26 

IV. Wall Street's British Gold Plot 37 

V. Our Bankrupt "Lady of the Snows" 48 

VI. The Crime of the Year 1915 59 

VII. The Sham Peace Societies 68 

VIII. Red Lights Ahead! 78 

IX. The "American" Pilgrims . 88 

X. The Men Who Toasted the Czar 98 

XI. Who is Using Our Life Insurance Funds? 105 

XII. Is Wall Street Using Savings Bank Deposits in Secret 

Loans to Russia, France and England? .... 119 

XIII. The Great News Conspiracy — How Unscrupulous News- 
, PAPER Owners, at the Behest of Wall Street, De- 
liberately Deceived the American People .... 131 



PREFACE 

These stories were written under fire, at a time when treason 
stalked through the land. They are human records of the amaz- 
ing acts of men who schemed and strove and plotted to blind 
ninety million people. 

Then these men, with immense cunning, set themselves to 
work at a game that is old as history. They coined great 
fortunes for themselves from the mad passions and blind hatreds 
they had instilled into their fellow-men. 

We, who tried to expose these conspirators, were villified, 
threatened, hounded by the most powerful and unscrupulous 
band that ever organized itself to ruin a country and its people 
in the interest of a foreign race. 

Even to-night, as I write these lines, the plots proceed apace 
(October 22, 1915). Wall Street millionaires are calling on Con- 
gress to expend a billion and a quarter dollars in the coming 
year, most of it on armament. They have sent the war stocks 
skyward, Bethlehem Steel the leader, with a gain of 59 points in 
a single afternoon, for they expect huge dividends to be paid on 
the hundreds of millions that will flow into their pockets from 
the ''National Defense." They have announced that they shall 
elect Elihu Root, the Wall Street corporation lawyer, as their 
President. England has deserted her ally, the Serb. The 
Germans are marching on Constantinople. 

Some plots have miscarried. Other war plots are brewing 
for the further enrichment of financiers. Shall we let them 
succeed, these fearful crimes planned by the men who, for a long 
year, have hoodwinked us, used us as their pawns — THE WAR 
PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET? 

Charles A. Collman. 



WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

I. 

YOUNG MORGAN, BRITAIN'S MUNITIONS AGENT 

One autumn day as I was passing the corner of Wall and 
Broad Streets, where the new but rather unsightly home of 
J. P. Morgan & Co. had just been erected, a friend, one of the 
leading financial writers of the Street, seized me by the arm, and 
pointing across the way, he exclaimed: "Do you see that stone 
there, streaked with red in the front wall of Morgan's building? 
That's the blood of the New Haven." 

We laughed. It was jestingly said, but in it was the tragedy 
that lurks behind most jests. The leading men of New England, 
trusting in the integrity of the Elder Morgan, had invested their 
family fortunes in New Haven stock. And when the great blow 
fell, no men knew better than we in Wall Street of the many 
women, the widows of those men, who had come to interview their 
bankers on the wrecking of their all. Those strained, tear-stained 
faces of the New England widows haunted the Street for weeks. 
It was the bitter story of lost homes, of sons taken from college, 
sent to work in the factories their fathers had once owned. 

The Elder Morgan inflated the costly bubble that disinte- 
grated the New Haven. Throughout his career he had trusted 
confidently in the future. And she was kind to him. He died 
before she could confront him with an accusing finger. 

The Elder Morgan died and we saw his son step into his place,, 
into his fortune and the seat in the banking house that heads the 
Money Trust and controls the finances of our country. Wall 
Street was breathlessly curious to learn what manner of man 
was this who now headed the banking world. 

Young Morgan, as he is still known, bears the same name as 
his father and possesses the same facial characteristics. He is; 
tall, with a strong, athletic frame, a firm step and a pleasant face. 

7 



8 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

He is popular among his friends, and no whisper of scandal has 
been breathed against his moral life. 

The Elder Morgan had a genius for great financial operations, 
he built immense corporations, and was an art collector without 
being a connoisseur. He diverted himself by buying known 
works of art at the highest possible prices. There was a sort of 
bluff heartiness about the Elder Morgan even in his despotism. 
He once scandalized Wall Street by slapping his chief partner in 
the face. They called him a pirate, and the old joker dubbed his 
yacht the Corsair. When he died, I wrote his four-page obituary 
in the Herald. In order to get my material, I read about every- 
thing that had ever been written about Morgan, I questioned his 
friends and associates and consulted my personal experiences 
with the banker. 

When I had completed that obituary, I was struck by a most 
remarkable fact. Not once by a gratuitous and kindly act, in no 
incident of his long career had he displayed the slightest sym- 
pathy for his human kind. 

No wonder we in Wall Street were curious to learn the man- 
ner of man Young Morgan should prove to be. 

I think the first revelation came to us all as a shock. On 
February 21st of this year Young Morgan testified before the 
United States Industrial Relations Committee. Chairman Walsh 
asked him what he considered the proper length of a working 
day for his employees. 

"I haven't any opinion on that subject," replied Young 
Morgan. 

"What do you regard as the proper income for an unskilled 
workman ? ' ' 

"There again I have no opinion." 

"Do you consider $10 a week sufficient to support a long- 
shoreman ? ' ' 

"I don't know. If that is all he can get and he takes it, I 
:suppose it is enough, ' ' and Morgan laughed. 

"At what age do you think children should go to work?" 

"I haven't any opinion." 

The spectators at the hearing began to regard the witness with 
•curious interest. 

' ' How far do you think stockholders are responsible for labor 
conditions ? ' ' continued the Chairman. 



YOUNG MORGAN, BRITAIN'S MUNITIONS AGENT 9 

"I don't think stockholders have any responsibility in that 
matter, ' ' was the reply. 

''How about directors?" 

"None at all." 

The witness was so indifferent and unresponsive to questions 
affecting laboring men and the causes of industrial unrest that 
the members of the Committee gladly let him depart with the 
remark : ' ' You are permanently excused, Mr. Morgan. " ^ 

Now Young Morgan would tell you that he is a private 
banker. He has resigned from most directorates of the banks 
and corporations with which he is connected. Yet he still owns 
and controls those banks and corporations, steamship lines, steel 
and iron plants, and the great world-wide financial machinery 
that his father raised, and for which his father's father laid the 
foundations. 

Young Morgan as a result of all this has immense power. It 
seems to me that there lies a source of uneasiness, if not acute 
danger to us in that the head of all this industry and banking, 
which concerns the welfare and personal safety of many millions 
of our people, should openly profess such unconcern, such a total 
absence of sympathy with his fellow-men. Of course, a man may 
think as he likes. But in our day it has become a sort of unwrit- 
ten duty that the man who makes a great and easy fortune from 
the labor of others, who controls the public 's money, and earns it 
from the public by the sale of large security issues, should exhibit 
some interest at least in those who work for him. I don 't recall 
a single instance in public life of another man confessing the 
sentiments that Young Morgan has avowed. "We see that the laws 
of heredity have been observed, and that the son has inherited his 
father's indifference to his human kind. 

When the Elder Morgan died, his son at once sold the Chinese 
porcelains on which his father had spent vast sums gained from 
"financing" the Erie and New Haven. He sold his father's 
Fragonard panels. There had been some expectation that the 
son would bequeath to the public museums his father's art col- 
lections — an act of expiation, one might say, for past plunderings 
of the public. But Young Morgan cared nothing for the public 's 
good wishes. He wanted the money. 

"We read in Carl Hovey's life of the Elder Morgan that the 
banker gained his education at the University of Gottingen. 



10 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Those early associations in Germany maintained a warm spot in 
the old corsair's hardened heart. Now we see his son selling^ 
bayonets and shrapnel that savage Sikhs and Senegal negroes 
may ravage the land where his father spent his youth. Young 
Morgan has little sentiment for his father's memory. 

At the beginning of the European war, Young Morgan com- 
pleted arrangements for making a loan to the Bank of France. 
This was on August 6, 1914. The Washington administration, 
immediately asked American citizens to observe neutrality, and 
declared its opposition to the proposed French loan. Young 
Morgan then abandoned the French loan, to the great satisfaction 
of the people of this country. 

Months passed, demand sterling dropped, English credit was 
affected, and England owed Morgan money. Then one day 
Young Morgan left this country for England. He landed in 
London. When the American correspondents there questioned 
him about his errand, he refused to talk. Young Morgan rarely 
talks. He went into the country, where he sought security from 
observation, and remained there for several weeks. In the United 
States Mr. Morgan's visit to England at such a crucial time was 
viewed with many misgivings. That the foremost American 
banker, noted for his British associations and sympathies, known, 
in fact, to be completely under the domination of this foreign 
influence, should be in England, secretly conferring with the 
heads of the British government, was sufficient to alarm every 
one of his countrymen. And Morgan was acting thus apparently 
against the expressed wishes of the Washington administration. 

What was being plotted in England between Morgan and the 
heads of the British government ? 

''The danger hid, breeds dreadful doubts." 

These dreadful doubts were soon to be verified. Young Mor- 
gan returned to this country and triumphantly announced that 
he had been appointed the official agent of the British govern- 
ment for the purchase of war munitions. 

An American multi-millionaire had again set himself above 
the law. He had committed an unneutral act, while his less 
wealthy fellow-countrymen were besought to remain neutral. 

It must be confessed that Mr. Morgan 's countrymen received 
this announcement that he had become a foreign government 
agent with feelings of grief and shame. It was incomprehensible 



YOUNG MORGAN, BRITAIN'S MUNITIONS AGENT 11 

to them that an American citizen, a man of enormous wealth, 
driven by no necessity, should deliberately have gone into the 
business of buying shrapnel for the killing of his human kind. 

Hatred stalks wide through the land. Lifelong friendships 
have been disrupted. Wounds have been opened which may 
never heal again. And Morgan has brought all this upon his 
country — the country which has showered upon him and his 
family all the opportunities, the ease and comfort that an enor- 
mous fortune brings. 

But Young Morgan cares nothing for all that. He wants the 
money. 

When recently charges were made in the British Parliament 
that Morgan was asking too high a price for his shrapnel, Lloyd 
George, Morgan's friend, defended him by saying that Morgan 
was making only two per cent. The trade in munitions is said to 
be approximating $2,000,000,000. Two per cent, of two billions 
is $40,000,000.* That a man, lured even by the spectre of this 
sum, should go into this bloody trade demands the possession of a 
cold and hardened heart. Young Morgan has all that. 

We remember that the grief and destitution of the widows 
and orphans of New England left the Elder Morgan as unmoved 
as the ash on the tip of one of those black cigars from his private 
Cuban plantation. 

I do not believe that any reproach or remonstrance would 
move Young Morgan to abandon his dreadful trade — no, not even 
though the widows and orphans he has made should plead with 
him, because, you see, he has no sympathy with his human kind. 

If the general public was amazed by the act of Young Morgan 
in becoming the paid agent of a foreign government, what was 
the emotion of Wall Street ? Bankers are the most conservative 
species of the money-making genera. A banker, as a rule, takes 
sides on public questions only in the most cautious and deliberate 
way. He wishes to get everybody's deposits, and sell his bonds 
and mortgages to the greatest number, as a baker sells his loaves 
of bread. He enters into no antagonisms, he challenges no en- 
mities, since such courses are fatal to his trade. 



• NOTE: — This sum represents only Mr. Morgan's commission as 
Britain's agent. Immense additional profits are also being made by 
him and his money trust associates from the companies engaged in 
the manufacture of munitions in which they are interested. 



12 



WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 



To say that the banking element of Wall Street was thunder- 
struck would be to put it mildly. I have spoken with many 
bankers on this subject, and the general sentiment can be summed 
up in the words of an old and conservative member of the f rater- 




THE TWO MORGANS 



nity : ' \ The Elder Morgan would never have done this thing. His 
son has left his father's ways. What the future will now have in 
store for him and the house his father left him no man may 
foretell." 

I have before me a copy of the London Daily Chronicle of 



YOUNG MORGAN, BRITAIN'S MUNITIONS AGENT 13 

June 24, 1915, containing the speech of Lloyd George, Morgan's, 
friend, before the House of Commons : 

' ' In consequence of the great importance of the American and 
Canadian markets, I have asked Mr. D. A. Thomas — (cheers) — 
to go over and assist in developing that side of the work. He will 
exercise control over the production of munitions in Canada and 
the States, and will be given the fullest authority. Mr. Thomas 
will act in co-operation with the representatives of the govern- 
ment in the States and in Canada. There is not the slightest idea, 
of superseding the existing agencies there. These agencies have 
worked admirably, and, I believe, have saved this country mil- 
lions of money. He will co-operate with Messrs. Morgan & Co.,. 
the accredited agents of the British government." 

Can this boast of the British politician possibly be true ? Has 
our country reached so low a pass that the representative of the 
British government exercises control over American industries,, 
acting in co-operation with America's leading banker, the agent 
of the British government ? 

Not long ago a demented man went to Young Morgan's home 
and shot at him. The crack of a pistol smoked out the fact that 
the British Ambassador was present in Morgan's home. 

That the British Ambassador was a visitor at the home of a 
pro-British banker would not be noteworthy. But what are we to 
suspect when the British Ambassador is secretly found in con- 
ference with the agent of the British government ? What was he^ 
doing there? "The danger hid, breeds dreadful doubts." 

If Young Morgan still retains his American citizenship, if he 
has not abandoned it as a result of his contract with the British 
government, as so many of his pro-British friends have done — 
Waldorf Astor and Sir ( ?) Thomas G. Shaughnessy, who spat 
upon republican principles and renounced his American citizen- 
ship to swear allegiance to the English throne — if, I say, Mr. 
Morgan is still one of us, he owes it to his countrymen to take 
them into his confidence before a Congressional inquiry is made 
into these grave affairs. 

Young Morgan should tell the American people with whose 
consent he became the accredited agent of the British govern- 
ment, and whether he first consulted the Washington authorities, 
before he compromised his country in this wise. He should tell 
us whether, as Lloyd George says, he really is co-operating with 



14 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Mr. Thomas in supervising American industries, and how far the 
financial resources of our people are being used in this contra- 
band trade with England. 

Young Morgan should tell us why, after abandoning his 
loan to France in the summer of 1914, he now makes a French 
loan in the summer of 1915 ; why he makes a $45,000,000 loan to 
Canada and is contemplating a loan to the British government of 
$500,000,000 of the American people 's money, after the Adminis- 
tration in Washington made him abandon these loans twelve 
months ago. 

Clear explanation should allay the dreadful fears that a 
British plot exists to make this country fight England's war in 
Europe as the price of $40,000,000 in commissions for the pur- 
chase of $2,000,000,000 worth of war material. 

I am sure that the entire country sympathized with Mr. Mor- 
gan when a crack-brained fool tried to strike him down. It sym- 
pathized also with his mother and his wife who were prostrated 
when they learned of the dreadful attempt. One can almost 
hear the two women pleading with the son and husband : ' ' Jack, 
give up this dreadful business. You see what it is leading to." 

And the man remains unmoved. 

About the time that deed occurred, there was in one of the 
Sunday newspapers a halftone picture taken from a Galician 
battlefield. It was not a pleasant picture. It showed a group 
of Galician peasant women assembled about a wooden shack, 
waiting patiently for a dole of black *bread and salt. They were 
barefooted, and some of them, had beastlike faces, torn with suf- 
fering and grief. I fear that our women also would be barefooted 
and show beastlike faces, if ever our homes were ravaged by 
Russian Cossacks. In the same paper Lloyd George was boasting 
that Britain would win the war, not by the valor of British 
arms, but by starving women such as these. These ragged Gali- 
cian peasant women knew that an Austro-German regiment 
had captured on that spot, from the Russians, boxes of ammuni- 
tion "Made in America." They knew who had sold these arms 
to the Russians via Archangel. Oh, it is known by this time over 
the world. They had come from Britain's munitions agent, who 
thereby was earning his two per cent. 

But these ragged, wretched Galician peasant women WERE 
ALSO WIVES AND MOTHERS. THEY ALSO HAD SEEN 



YOUNG MORGAN, BRITAIN'S MUNITIONS AGENT 15 

THEIR SONS AND HUSBANDS STRICKEN DOWN. And 
these women were primitive natures. They knew how to curse 
and wail. 

The old Assyrian kings were conspicuous for a peculiar streak 
of cruelty. When they captured a town, they proudly record 
making mounds outside of the city gates of the hands and ears 
of their captives. "Those whom I spared, I put out their eyes 
and cut off their noses. ' ' Modern historians explain this peculiar 
trait of the Assyrians by stating that these people lacked imag- 
ination — that is, they could not conceive suffering in others as 
applied to themselves. 

I think this rule applies to Young Morgan. I fear he fails in 
imagination. 

I confess that if I were Britain's munitions agent, I would 
wake o' nights sweating with fright, my ears ringing with those 
shrieks and wails from the Galician battle-fields: 

' ' Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
What do I fear ? Myself ? there 's none else by : 
There is no creature loves me ; 
And if I die, no soul will pity me : 
Nay, wherefore should they 1 Since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself. 
Methought the souls of all that I had murder 'd 
Came to my tent." 

I have never before written a word in criticism of Young 
Morgan, and what I add now I write with reluctance and regret. 
But this pro-British banker, this handsome, stalwart man, with 
his satiate eye, with his lack of human sympathy, with absence 
of sentiment and imagination, walking to and from his banking 
house in Wall Street to earn his bloody two per cent., I regard 
to-day as the man most dangerous to the peace of his country. 



II. 

THE WAE> STOCK GAMBLERS 

Wall Street has many moods and guises. It dresses them 
in externals, as an actor does his parts. 

The other day I strolled into the entrance of the Stock Ex- 
change, and my eyes met the large placard posted there : — 

''Gallery Closed for Repairs." 

Nonrepairs are ever needed for the gallery of the Stock Ex- 
change. I knew the portents of that sign. I have seen it there 
before, and know the reason why. It meant that the public had 
been excluded from the observation stand where it is permitted 
to watch the brokers' hubbub about the trading posts in the 
country's greatest money market. It meant FEAR. 

So I went around to the Wall Street entrance, where I satis- 
fied the uniformed watchers stationed there as to my good inten- 
tions. For all entrances to the Stock Exchange are guarded, as 
are many Wall Street banking houses now, whose partners are 
kept under secret protection when they go about. 

I went to the fifth floor of the building to the "Library," 
where the financial writers congregate. One of them came up to 
me and w^hispered: "Collman, do you know they've just put a 
new steel wire netting over the roof of the Exchange ? ' ' 

We interchanged significant glances. ' ' Why, ' ' I asked, "have 
they been getting letters again ? " 

"Yes," he answered, in a lowered tone, "but they asked us 
not to mention it in the newspapers." 

In order to verify my friend's statement, I later ascended to 
the sixteenth floor of the Commercial Cable Building and looked 
down upon the shaft which opens on the great glass dome over 
the floor of the Exchange. My friend had not been mistaken. 
There it spread, a new, glittering steel wire netting, strong and 
durable, protecting the men, who, far below, were buying and 
selling war stocks, to the accompaniment of a clamorous din. 

And I could not refrain from asking myself, Why should men 

16 



THE WAR STOCK GAMBLERS 17 

be working way down there in secret, screened from, the public 
eye? 

Now in all this fair land of ours, those who are engaged in 
honest work do not hide behind steel screens, surrounded by 
guardsmen to protect them from the public gaze. When we go 
to see other men at business, we are accustomed to a bright Amer- 
ican smile, a hearty handclasp and a cheery response that times 
are good and trade is booming. 

When men work in secret hiding places, we are accustomed 
to associate them with those wretches who make explosives for 
the slaying of their fellows, or hatch some plot to strip them of 
their coin. 

Is it possible that Wall Street can be engaged upon the com- 
mission of a crime ? 

Let us see. 

On the New York Stock Exchange there are 1,100 member- 
ships. These brokers, as a rule, are handsome, hearty fellows, 
generous and good natured as are most men who make easy 
money. They do not produce, but absorb from the surplus pro- 
vided by those who do the work of the land. Wall Street men 
know this so well that many of them engage in public movements 
and philanthropies. Wall Street must be made respectable. Mr. 
Henry Clews, for instance, who may be termed the Nestor of 
the brokerage world, is head of the American Peace and Arbi- 
tration League. To some it might appear an inconsistency that 
war stocks should be permitted to be posted on the quotation 
board in his brokerage office. But then that is business. Since 
the great war started, however, Mr. Clews, both as a publicist 
and a public speaker, has seen fit to single out for attack one of 
the many nationalities that go to make up the population of our 
country, and that is not so well. People who live in glass houses, 
you know. 

Mr. Clews and I have known each other for a great many 
years, and we have always been good friends, although, if he will 
permit me to say so, he is a foreigner and I am an American. 

Mr. Clews was born in England and came to this country a 
poor boy, for his native land had nothing to offer him. We, in 
our country, have welcomed Mr. Clews, have given him the priv- 
ilege of making a large fortune and enjoying an easy life.. I 
think we all have rejoiced in seeing Mr. Clews prosper. So far 
as I know, nobody has ever attacked Mr. Clews because he is of 



18 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

English birth, so it does not seem quite just that he should assail 
another race. Coming from a man of his age and standing, such 
words as he has uttered are calculated to awaken hatreds and 
dissensions that might tend to plunge our country into war. I 
think it is regretful that he should have brought over to us his 
old-world hatreds. I could probably say to him: "Mr. Clews, 
if you don't like the views of my country and the people of my 
country, you had better return to your own." But that is not 
the American way. I should not like to see Mr. Clews returned 
to his country. I like him too well. I admire him for his many 
gifts which have been useful to our people. Besides, I think he 
has a kindly heart, and is merely subject to an English fault. 

I mention this attitude of Mr. Clews because I am convinced 
that it has a direct bearing on the fact that Wall Street to-day 
conducts its work in secret. This secretiveness is an admission 
of the Money Trust that in backing the Allies it is wronging other 
races in this country, and that it works in guilty fear of them. 
How much better would it be for Mr. Clews to prove his loyalty 
to his adopted country by advocating an embargo on the ship- 
ment of arms and ammunition to the warring nations, thus put- 
ting to shame his next door neighbor, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, 
American by birth, but official agent for Great Britain, who, for 
the sake of the money lie makes, brings upon his country crisis 
after crisis because of his traffic in war material. 

Throughout the United States millions of men are looking 
upon Wall Street and its Stock Exchange with eyes red in 
hatred. They see there disloyalty on every hand, bankers making 
themselves agents for foreign governments, naturalized citizens 
eager for war in the interest of the land from which they came, 
and which they seem to love better than their own. And among 
such are the War Stock Gamblers. 

Mr. Noble, you are the President of the New York Stock 
Exchange, which is the medium through which the Money Trust 
unloads upon the public the stocks in its war enterprises. 

You will recall that several years ago, after the public had 
been lured into Wall Street, plundered and stripped, a great 
outcry arose to incorporate the Stock Exchange. 

As at present constituted, the Exchange is a private club. 
Its members do as they like, subject only to the club's restrictions. 

"In case of the insolvency of a member, his obligations to 



THE WAR STOCK GAMBLERS 19 

other members take precedence over even the claims of a cus- 
tomer who has been defrauded." 

The proposal to incorporate the Exchange was greeted with 
fury by your members. Your predecessor, Mr. ' Mabon, pro- 
nounced.it a monstrous injustice, and at a dinner members hissed 
the name of New York 's governor and threatened to remove their 
organization from the state. 

But when the Pujo Committee recommended that Congress 
prohibit the use of the «nails, telegraph and telephone to your 
association, the Exchange promised to reform. It appointed a 
press agent, Mr. AVilliam C. Van Antwerp, at a salary of $15,000 
a year — or is it $25,000? — whose duty it was to make the Ex- 
change popular again. I received some of these reform prom- 
ises from the hands of Mr. Van Antwerp, and as I thought they 
were earnestly meant, I published them. 

In view of that fact, Mr. Noble, I am entitled to ask you, 
How have those promises been kept ? 

To-day on the Stock Exchange the old game of swindling the 
public is in full blast again, but in a form crueller, meaner and 
more contemptible than ever. 

You know to what I am referring — the War Stocks. 

What are war stocks? 

Since Mr. Morgan the Younger made himself Britain's muni- 
tions agent, the pro-British Money Trust has jumped in to manu- 
facture arms and shrapnel for the Allies. They think they will 
make ''fat money" by selling this material for the purpose of 
arming savage mercenaries, through whom England hopes to 
wipe out the Germanic races of Central Europe, from which 
more than one-half of our people have sprung. AA^ell and good. 
But the Money Trust hopes also to make money in another way, 
namely by foisting upon the public, at high prices, the stocks 
issued on»its war. plants. 

Among these war stocks I shall pick out a few conspicuous 
examples. They are Bethlehem Steel, Crucible Steel, Westing- 
house, American Coal Products and Pressed Steel Car. There 
are also many others. 

As I write this, Pressed Steel Car has been manipulated from 
$25 to $59^4 a share; Crucible, from $18>4 to $923^; Westing- 
house, from $64 to $115 ; Coal Products, from $82 to $170i/<, and 
Bethlehem, from $29>4 to $311. 



20 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Those are huge advances. On what are they supposed to be 
based ? Large cash dividends looming in sight ? Mr. Noble, you 
know as well as I do that the members of the Money Trust never 
share their profits with the people. They will put such profits 
as they make into plants, and issue more stock against the latter, 
unloading it ait still higher prices through the members of the 
Stock Exchange upon the public, which is to be neatly fleeced 
again, 

. Mr. Noble, did not the Exchange promise us that such repre- 
hensible manipulations would be prohibited? 

You know far better than I how the hidden machinery of 
the stock boomers is being used, to stimulate the public appetite 
for speculation in war stocks. Paid tipsters float about uptown 
hotels ; marvelous stories appear in venal newspapers of fortunes 
coined by lucky gamblers. Stories of phenomenal war orders 
from Russia or Great Britain are impudently invented, such as a 
$90,000,000 war contract by American Can, or the 400,000,000 
cigarettes supposed to have been ordered from the P. Lorillard 
Tobacco Company. In these two instances, well-meaning direc- 
tors denied the lying stories. But the rumors augment daily, 
the faked contracts grow in number and volume, and the gam- 
bling fever is. whetted sharper by the harpies who prey upon the 
savings of the foolish and credulous. 

Now and then a high official of one of the war stock com- 
panies has the courage to step out to try to stem the rising tide 
of gambling which alw^ays leads to ruin. A member of the Cru- 
cible Company warned the public the other day that the stock 
was not worth its selling price. He said that there was out- 
standing in unpaid scrip and accumulated dividends on pre- 
ferred stock $7,300,000, that the company is guaranteeing $7,- 
800,000 of bonds, and has $2,500,000 to $3,000,000 of bonds out- 
standing on its subsidiary companies. He pointed out that, with 
these obligations in sight, and with the large expenditures nec- 
essary to finish its new plants, the common stock could not be 
expected to pay dividends for years to come. The shares of the 
company at once dropped five points, but impudent price boost- 
ers took up the song of "huge profits" again next day, and the 
market plungers soon forgot a warning sincerely meant. 

Let me give you an example from my personal observation, 
of how the public "makes money" out of war stocks. I met in 



THE WAR STOCK GAMBLERS 21 

the office of one of the members of your Exchange, a trader who, 
several days before, had bought 100 shares of Crucible Steel. 
It went up three points, and he took on 200 shares more. I was 
talking with him on the morning of Thursday, July 29. Cru- 
cible had opened with a gain of nearly five points, and this trader 
had again plunged to the extent of 500 shares. The stock still 
advanced. Flushed with the sense of coming riches, he turned 
to me and said: "I've already made $3,000 in Crucible, and 
that'll pay for the killing of 1,000 Germans. What do I care. 
Business is biz. I would like to see us get into the war. Crucible 
would extend its plants and get still bigger war contracts from 
the government. Why, you'd see it jump to $1,000 a share." 

Crucible went to 79 that day. My acquaintance, the trader, 
became delirious with speculative fever. You know the symp- 
toms, Mr. Noble. You are a broker, and make your commission 
out of such men. When Crucible went to 79, this man bought 
500 additional shares. It went to 83, and he bought 1,000. This 
was at about two o'clock in the afternoon, if my memory serves 
me right. Then from one of those corrupt sources, which the 
Exchange manipulators know so well to use, there came a story 
that Bethlehem had bought the Crucible company. Traders rea- 
soned that, since the news was out, they had better sell. Cru- 
cible began to melt until it declined to 66, only a fraction above 
the price at which it had closed the day before. 

I met my trader a few days later. In the decline he had lost 
more than $20,000 and was in debt even to his broker. He was 
wandering about like a stricken thing. 

He had thought to make money by following the war stock 
gamblers. Poor fool ! The Money Trust had made short shrift 
of him. 

Do you ever stop to think, Mr. Noble, what a cruel business 
your members are engaged in? Do you not think that at least 
it ought to be played fair? 

Let me call something to your attention. 

In the last five weeks, as I write this, 130,540 shares of Beth- 
lehem were traded in upon the Exchange, or nearly as much as 
the entire outstanding stock in the hands of the public ; in Coal 
Products, 109,898 shares were traded in, or more than all the 
outstanding stock ; in Westinghouse, 1,445,490 shares were traded 
in, or four times the amount of the outstanding stock; in the 



22 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

instance of Crucible, 1,135,400 shares were traded in, or five 
times the amount of the outstanding stock, which aggregates 
only 245,784 shares. 

This undoubtedly indicates that these stocks are "cornered." 
The war stock gamblers do not sell the stock itself, of which the 
floating supply is small, but sell contracts to receive and de- 
liver it. 

Mr. Noble, was not one of the reforms promised us, a prohi- 
bition of the ''cornering" of stocks? Is stock "cornering" per- 
mitted under the law 1 

Into what deep waters have thy rowers led thee ? 

The old argument that the Exchange has nothing to buy and 
nothing to sell, and is only a meeting place for its members, will 
no longer hold. The representatives of the Exchange did not 
make that plea in Albany, three or four years ago, when they 
pleaded against incorporation, and promised honest trading 
methods for the future. 

One of the members of your Exchange recently said to me : 
' ' We may not be doing the right thing, but we hope to get away 
with it, anyhow." He is mistaken. This time you will not get 
away with it. There is an old saying in the financial district: 
' ' The men who drop their money in Wall Street are good losers. 
They never squeal." That is true. The man who has been 
trimmed in the Street slinks away from the district. He has 
been carefully educated to the fact that it is considered bad 
form to blow one's brains out in a broker's office. 

Already the financial district is filling with the stories of the 
heart-breaks of ruined men, of suicides, of families left penniless 
through the work of the war stock gamblers. The public is in an 
ugly temper. It is not the same public that rose against the 
Stock Exchange in 1912-13. This time you have aroused the 
anger of a great people. It is an undemonstrative, conservative 
and industrious race, that forms the bone and sinew of our 
nation, and when it is deeply wronged, IT NEVER FORGIVES, 
AND IT NEVER FORGETS. 

Have you read the official organ of Wall Street ( Commercial 
and Financial Chronicle, July 31), and the warning it has ad- 
dressed to you? It says: — 

' ' The war order business will in any event be of short dura- 
tion. There may be large immediate profits (waiving altogether 



THE WAR STOCK aAMBLERS 23 

the question of risks) , but these large profits cannot in any event 
last very long. But the prospect of these large profits, albeit 
of a very risky nature, is being dangled before the eyes of the 
public and a gigantic speculation is being carried on, evidently 
by powerful cliques, with the view of utilizing the situation. 

"Similar schemes have been worked in the past, but never 
has the transparent character of the undertaking been so mani- 
fest as on the present occasion. It is the duty of all who are in 
position to influence popular sentiment or who have access to the 
popular thought, to warn the innocent public against allowing 
themselves to become the prey of the designing band of manipu- 
lators. 

"Has not the Stock Exchange a duty in the premises which 
it should not neglect to perform? 

"The Stock Exchange authorities must proceed as the District 
Attorney would in ferreting out crime. And after the offending 
parties have been discovered, further dealings with them or for 
them must be prohibited." 

These are pretty strong words, Mr. Noble, but do you know 
why they have been uttered? All over the country people are 
withdrawing their money from banks of deposit and demanding 
gold. They have learned that the Money Trust, which is selling 
war munitions to the Allies, cannot get gold from the latter, and 
is now using the people's money to reimburse itself. French, 
Russian and British securities, received by the Trust from those 
countries, are being planted in all the banking institutions, 
which are loaning the public's money upon them. 

If you do not believe what I say, send to me and I will show 
you the written admissions of banking oificials to that effect. 

Russia is bankrupt, one-fourth of France is in ruins, and 
Great Britain has scaled down the principal on the premier se- 
curity of the British Empire, Consols, which it redeems at only 
two-thirds of the par value in new securities. These countries 
will not hesitate to make a partial default on the securities 
planted by the Money Trust in American banks, on which it has 
borrowed the people's money. "When that day comes, the Wall 
Street banks will have to call in the loans they are making on 
the inflated war stocks. And the war stock gamblers will have 
made another panic. 

Do you remember the panic of 1907, which was precipitated 



24 WAR PLOTTERS OF "WALL STREET 

by the Wall Street stock gamblers ? Do you recall how the streets 
in the financial district were filled with the mob, and the steps of 
the Sub-Treasury were black with them? Don't provoke them 
to come like that again, for in the year 1915 the results will 
be different. 

In 1907 you relied upon the Elder Morgan to save the dis- 
trict. But now the Elder Morgan is dead, and can no longer 
lend Wall Street the millions he obtained from the United States 
Treasury, and you have only Britain's munitions agent to de- 
pend upon. 

The other day, Mr. Noble, you issued a defense of the Stock 
Exchange. Sleek, smug and smiling, you leaned back and blamed 
the "speculative excitement," and said that "human nature" 
could not be curbed. Caveat emptor, eh? Let the buyer be- 
ware. 

But you well know that you can regulate the transactions on 
the Exchange. Does not the Constitution of the State prohibit 
horse racing and gambling? Did not the Hughes Committee, 
which investigated the practices of your association, say : " In its 
nature it is in the same class with gambling upon the race track 
or at the roulette table, but is practiced on a vastly larger 
scale. It involves a practical certainty of loss to those who 
engage in it." 

If you do not wish a Federal regulation of the Exchange, 
which will permit an inspection of the methods used in the 
manipulation of the war orders, then call a meeting of your 
Board of Governors and proceed against the war stock gamblers, 
and strike all the manipulated stocks from the Stock Exchange 
list. Abolish your useless publicity bureau, and devote the large 
sums thus needlessly spent toward reimbursing in some measure 
the miserable victims of the Stock Exchange gamble. 

You are the responsible head. 

I urge you most earnestly to take this step. 

You and I know why you have excluded the public from the 
gallery of the Stock Exchange, why you have installed your wire 
netting and posted your guards. You fear that some poor wretch 
who has lost his all in the war stocks swindle may try to hurl a 
bomb at the men whom he blames for having despoiled him. 
Or that some crackbrained foreigner may attempt the act, be- 
cause his brother was killed abroad by the Money Trust shrapnel. 



THE WAR STOCK GAMBLERS 25 

In that you may be right or wrong. I have no opinion in the 
matter. 

But if you do not act quickly, I fear that you are threatened 
with a much greater danger, from which wire nets and armed 
guards will fail to save you and your members, and that is the 
condemnation of the GREAT SILENT MAJORITY. 



Ill 

THE CURTAIN RAISED ON WALL STREET'S 
UNDERWORLD 

It was high noon in Wall Street on August the eleventh, of 
the Christian year nineteen hundred and fifteen. The Sub- 
Treasury stretched its gloomy length along the east side of 
Nassau Street, all the way from Pine to Wall. But at this hour 
the financial district wears its cheeriest smile. 

Little typists strolled along, arm in arm, chatting and flirt- 
ing ; messenger boys whistled ; brokers ' clerks, accountants, bank 
runners, bond men, all the rout that makes up the workers of the 
Street, were pouring from their haunts into the thoroughfares 
of the money market. 

Then a change flashed over the scene. There was a rush of 
many feet westward along Wall Street. A body of mounted 
police, with stern faces, pistols in their holsters, galloped up. 

From around the Wall Street corner there came slowly up 
Nassau Street a long parade of motor trucks, its mounted guards 
on either side. The crowds, that quickly gathered, looked on 
these guards who had driven them from the eastern sidewalk, 
with curious and sombre faces. They seemed to view a funeral 
cortege. And, indeed, something in our public life, something 
that was very dear to us, was buried there that day. 

There were twenty-five trucks. The rear end of each was 
closed with a thick steel wiring. From behind each of these 
gratings one could distinguish the grim forms and faces of four 
men, with rifles and automatic pistols in their hands. 

It was in this wise that King George of England sent to J. 
Pierpont Morgan, his accredited agent, the gold in payment for 
bayonets and shrapnel. 

And as I stood there on the sidewalk the blood welled to my 
face and rage surged through my heart. 

For I asked myself, whom do armed men threaten on the open 
street! At whom do they aim those loaded rifles? 

Brothers, they were meant for you and me. 

It was the defiance of Morgan and his Money Trust to the 
silent wrath of honest men. He said : ' ' Bow to my will, or I shall 

26 



WALL STREET'S UNDERWORLD 27 

shoot you down." The pleasing masks these bankers wear had 
dropped, and there were revealed the hideous males, the primal 
brutes, cowering over the gold they had earned by the mangling 
of human flesh, gnashing their tusks in rage at the people whose 
sympathies they had thwarted, whose ideals they had crushed, by 
the shameful trade in war munitions. 

To those who dwell in the vast stretches of our country that 
spread far west of the Hudson River, the doings of Wall Street 
are an unsolved mystery. They suspect and fear. They do not 
know. 

WALL street's UNDERWORLD 

I shall draw back a corner of this mysterious curtain and' 
disclose the workings of Wall Street's underworld. You shall 
read here something incredible, unbelievable, — of men who have 
duped, deceived, dishonored you, and are now bent on plundering 
you on a scale vaster than has ever before been attempted in the 
history of our time. 

Colonel Robert M. Thompson, a high-minded American pa- 
triot, inaugurated on June 6th the organization of the Navy 
League of the United States.. He advocated an immediate issue 
by the government of $500,000,000, to be devoted to the construc- 
tion of a greater army and navy. He then invited a large number 
of citizens, supposedly imbued with similarly patriotic senti- 
ments, to attend a luncheon and conference on this important 
subject. 

But hold, one moment, Colonel. Why, when you issued those 
invitations, did you not address them to public-spirited and dis- 
interested men, who have the peace and welfare of our country at 
heart? Why, on the contrary, did you invite the members of 
J. P. Morgan & Co., official agents of the British government in 
the purchase of war munitions, and financial backers of the Steel 
Trust, whose products are being turned into bayonets and shrap- 
nel for the Allies ? Why did you invite to your patriotic luncheon 
the directors of companies making mnllions in the manufacture of 
war material, and bankers who make further millions from such 
concerns by selling their securities and acting as their transfer 
agents ? 

Why, when you purposed to spend $500,000,000 of the public 
money, without consulting the people who earn it, did you confer 



28 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

with the members of Wall Street's Money Trust, into whose 
pockets those $500,000,000 would flow ? 

Here are some of the gentlemen to wdiom that ardent patriot, 
Colonel Thompson, addressed himself : 

J. Pierpont Morgan iWT S. H. P. Pell 

Thomas W. Lamont iW^ Cornelius Vanderbilt 

William H. Porter If^ Ogden L. ]\Iills 

Henry P. Davison ^^ Frederic R. Coudert 

Charles Steele if^ Francis L. Hine 

Paul D. Cravath 1^ Edmund C. Converse 

Elbert H. Gary if^ Daniel G-. Reid 

Harry Payne Wliitney U^ Percy Rockefeller 

Seward Prosser D^ Frank A. Vanderlip 

L. L. Clarke* 



The luncheon was held. The innocent Colonel, addressing his 
distinguished and "disinterested" guests, broached his pet plan 
of distributing $500,000,000 of American money to America's 
armament manufacturers. To his gratification, the issue was 
"enthusiastically advocated, " as promptly recorded in the Money 
Trust's organ, the New York Times. 

Now let us analyze some of the activities of this assemblage of 
American patriots: 

Messrs. Morgan, Lamont, Porter, Davison, and Steele are 
members of the banking house of J. P. Morgan & Co., agents of 
the British, French, and Russian governments for the purchase 
of war material, and interested in huge corporations making 
huger profits from the manufacture of war supplies. 

The Wall Street Journal on May 6th said that "the United 
.States Steel Corporation has been getting and will get orders for 
steel from concerns in this country, wdiich have taken orders for 
shrapnel and other war munitions." And it added on August 
3rd that "the United States Steel Corporation has obtained a 
Russian rail order amounting to $25,000,000." Now Messrs. 
Morgan, Gary and Converse are members of the Steel Trust 
board. 



*NOTE: — This story has been republished throughout this country and Europe. It has 
put Colonel Thompson on the defensive. He pleads that some of these men did not attend 
his luncheon. He does not deny having invited them. He does not deny that he read, 
at his luncheon, the receipt of money subscriptions from them. He does not deny that 
Morgan sent him money, and that Morgan is the leading member of his Navy League. 



WALL STREET'S UNDERWORLD 29 

The Wall Street Journal added that "the Lackawanna Steel 
Company has been helped in war orders to the extent of $7,000,- 
000 for rails and steel." Two of the invited patriots, Messrs. 
Cornelius Vanderbilt and Ogden L. Mills, are directors of this 
company. 

The Wall Street Journal further related on May 4th : ' ' The 
President of the National Surety Company estimates that $1,500,- 
000,000 in war material has been contracted for. The estimate is 
based on the applications for surety bonds ivhich his company 
has received.'' Strange to relate, we find among the directors of 
the National Surety Company the name of Mr. Frederic R. Cou- 
dert who, in the public prints, so bitterly denounces Germany 
every time a delicate diplomatic crisis occurs between that coun- 
try and our own. Surely, Mr. Coudert does not desire to see this 
country go to war on behalf of his beloved France, that the 
National may underwrite more surety bonds? 

THE COLONEL UNMASKED 

Again we find that on May 4th the Wall Street Journal in- 
forms the Street that "the International Nickel Company is 
enjoying an improvement in its business because of the increase 
in the consumption of nickel brought about by the war." And 
what do we find here? Oh, shame to tell it! Oh, Colonel, Colonel, 
is it thus you dupe your countrymen? Colonel Robert M. Thomp- 
son is chairman of the board of the International Nickel Com- 
pany, and among the directors are Messrs. Edmund C. Converse, 
S. H. P. Pell, and Seward Prosser. 

The Wall Street Journal further chronicles that ' ' the Ameri- 
can Locomotive Company's order for shrapnel amounts to ap- 
proximately $65,000,000," which must be of specific interest to 
Mr. L. L. Clarke, one of the directors. 

Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing is one of the dead- 
liest of the "war stocks" on the Stock Exchange, and Mr. Paul 
D. Cravath is a member of its board. 

Another ' ' war stock ' ' is General Electric, one of whose direct- 
ing geniuses is Mr. Charles Steele, of J. P. Morgan & Co. 

The Farmers' Loan & Trust Company is transfer agent for 
the General Electric Company, and on the trust company board 
we locate Messrs. Percy Rockefeller and Frank A. Vanderlip. 

The Guaranty Trust Company is the transfer agent for the 




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32 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Westinghouse, American Car & Foundry, Atlas Powder Com- 
pany, Hercules Powder Company, and other war munitions 
concerns. Messrs. Daniel G. Reid, Harry Payne Whitney, and 
Thomas W. Lamont are its directors. 

The Bankers Trust Company is transfer agent for the Bald- 
win Locomotive Works, and among the directors of this concern 
are Messrs. Reid, Hine, Davison, and Converse. 

So there, all the disinterested patriots are accounted for, yea, 
even the founder of the Navy League. 

Why then, I ask, should not Colonel Thompson's scheme to 
spend $500,000,000 of government money have been "enthusi- 
astically advocated" by gentlemen so closely affiliated with the 
war munitions factories 1 Why should they not have leaned back 
in their chairs at the obliging Colonel's luncheon, clinked their 
glasses and cheered, laughing in their sleeves over the jest they 
were having at the expense of their simple-minded countrymen, 
while they slapped their capacious pockets in the hope of soon 
secreting there the $500,000,000 to be spent on armament. 

For, you see, the war in Europe some time will be ended, and 
the Money Trust's war munitions plants must not be idle. No, 
it is the duty of Wall Street patriots to organize Navy Leagues 
and National Security Leagues and the like, that the government 
may be urged by the great patriotic clamor to spend vast sums 
on war material. 

Colonel, I have a further word to say to you. You are a per- 
sonal friend, I believe, of Mr. James Gordon Bennett,* owner 
of the Herald, who, I see, subscribed several thousand dollars to 
your singular scheme. Mr. Bennett is an expatriate, who is 
cabling frantically to this side of the water that the United 
States must join the war to rescue his adopted country, 
France. 

Colonel, if the people of this country wish to have a larger, 
army and navy, they will not consult the chairman of the Inter- 
national Nickel Company, nor Bennett, the Franco- American, 
nor your friends, the makers of shrapnel. Their representatives 
in Congress will attend to that. And the government will build 



♦ They are cronies. Both have broken their country's laws. James 
Gordon Bennett was fined $30,000 in the Federal Court for sending 
obscene matter through the mails. Colonel Robert M. Thompson was 
fined $4,000 by Judge Holt in the Federal Court, August 4, 1910, for 
violating the Sherman Law .in cornering cotton. 



WALL STREET'S UNDERWORLD 33 

its own armament plants. It will not buy the idle ones of the 
Money Trust when the war has ended. 
So much for the Navy League. 

STILL DRAWING BACK THE CURTAIN 

Let me draw back this mysterious curtain further and disclose 
to view the great spider's web that has been spun in Wall 
Street : 

On the first chart you may see a list of names of forty Wall 
Street men, who are identified with the war munitions concerns, 
or with companies that profit from their work, or with banking 
houses engaged in contraband traffic, or with bonding concerns 
that insure the war contracts, or with banks and trust companies 
that act as fiscal or transfer agents for the munitions companies. 

Now Wall Street financiers are far-sighted men. From the 
very nature of their business they look ahead, yes, ever far ahead. 
These men, presiding at their board meetings, are authorizing 
vast extensions to their armament plants. What do they mean to 
do with these great new plants after Europe 's war is over ? 

Let us look into this phase of the question for a moment. 

"Bridgeport is making such strides in the manufacture of 
arms and munitions and war machinery, that predictions are 
freely heard on all sides that it will' grow to a city of half a 
million population within the next few years. In the transfor- 
mation of Bridgeport into the American Essen, the Remington 
Company and the Union Metallic Cartridge Company began to 
branch out and put up great buildings that dwarf those used in 
the past." — (Sunday newspaper.) 

June 18th. — Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem Steel Com- 
pany, will build the third factory for the manufacture of shrap- 
nel. August 22nd. — Following the recent trip here of Charles 
M. Schwab, with British and Russian army officers, it is an- 
nounced that the Bethlehem Steel Company will build a large 
factory near its shell proving ground at Cape May Point, for 
the making of powder and shells. 

August 12th. — The Dupont Powder Company has begun the 
work of staking out the buildings on the fourth addition to the 
Dupont plant at Carney's Point. The addition will be larger 
than any of the other three plants now in operation. When the 



34 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

war began, the company had only one plant, the others having 
been added in quick time as orders increased. 

August 20th. — The Dupont Company is to distribute 
$58,000,000 in new stock in a new coriDoration. 

August 11th. — The plant of the Smith & Wallace Company, 
manufacturers of electrical supplies, has been leased to an asso- 
ciation of New York financiers and will immediately be converted 
into a war munitions factory. 

August 11th, — The Bethlehem Steel Company has purchased 
the modern plant of the Detrick & Harvey Machine Company. 
The manufacture of munitions of war will be begun as soon as 
possible. 

May 29th. — The Atlas Powder Company has secured control 
of various powder mills on the Pacific coast. Stockholders of the 
company have authorized $5,500,000 6% cumulative preferred 
stock for necessary financing. 

Here is a faint conception of the tremendous new enterprises 
of the Money Trust. Now I shall quote the Wall Street Journal 
of July 19th : 

"Will tlie demand for war material outlast the conflict? Will 
the great industry that has been established in so short a time 
end with the war? It is noticeable that those concerns that are 
erecting plant extensions or new plants to take care of the war 
business, are not providing temporary and inexpensive struc- 
tures. They are building modern and permanent structures of 
hrich or concrete and steel. 

MORE WARS TO COME 

' ' If the war continues or is followed hy others, the munition 
tnakers would &e in a position to reap enormous profits as a result 
of having the plants ready." 

Yes, our far-sighted financiers will see to it that this war "is 
followed by others." And they will "reap enormous profits." 

But who, at the dictum of the Money Trust, will toil to pay 
for those untold millions to be spent by our country on armament 
for the upkeep of the new war plants? Who, at the dictum of 
the Money Trust, must shed their blood in the wars that are 
"followed by others"? 

Brothers, you and I. 

Yes, and then we, too, shall echo the bitter groans we have 



WALL STREET'S UNDERWORLD 35 

heard emitted by despairing millions, staggering under the mili- 
tary burdens of Europe's monarchies. 

And now are we to be the dupes of Wall Street "patriots"? 
If we investigate the patriotism of the members of the Money 
Trust we shall find it to be thin-skinned, indeed. Their ambition 
is to amass great fortunes, and then to seek their homes abroad. 
They choose new homes in France and England for reasons such 
as to escape unpleasant public inquiries, or that they may lead 
lives that would not be approved by their fellow country- 
men, 

I refer to expatriates such as James Stillman, one-time presi- 
dent of the National City Bank ; James Hazen Hyde, of insurance 
scandal fame; William E. Corey, of the Steel Trust, and James 
Gordon Bennett, of unsavory name. I refer to men like Henry 
James, who renounced his country; to men like Sir Thomas 
Shaughnessy, who sold his American birthright for a foreign 
title. 

But when the day of trouble comes, such fine gentry troop 
back home, as these have done. And then they read us a lesson 
in patriotism, and tell us that we must fight for the countries of 
their adoption. 

Yes, they say that to us; we, the millions who stay here and 
toil and suffer for our country's good; we, who are descended 
from races other than the English ; we, whose fathers tilled the 
soil in pioneer days, and shed their blood in all our country's 
wars. 

They tell us that we must fight for England, these expatriates, 
these lip-patriots, their pockets fat with British gold — we must 
fight for England, the hereditary enemy of our land, for her 
against whom our fathers fought, for England, our worst enemy 
to-day. 

''If I am ashed ivliat I mean hy a ' reasonahly possible enemy,' 
I reply — any power except Great Britain." — Former Attorney 
General Charles J. Bonaparte, at a meeting of the National 
Security League in Carnegie Hall on June 15th. 

I say to you, you Forty Gentlemen of Wall Street's Spider's 
AVeb : 

Gentlemen, many of you were born of gentle blood. Most of 
you have all the money you require. 

Gentlemen, you are standing with foreigners against your 



36 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

own countrymen. You are defying the sentiments of millions; 
you are outraging their highest and holiest beliefs, 

I ask you to arise in your board meetings and protest against 
this bloody trade. I ask you to help us with your great influence 
to check this fury-mad pro-British crew that seeks to hurl our 
country into a foreign war in which it has no share. 

If men of your type remain quiescent in this hour of danger, 
then our country has sunk to a low pass indeed. Thousands of 
years ago men, such as we, founded republics very much like 
ours, in Greece and Rome. But they succumbed to plutocrats. 

Gentlemen, are there those among you who have courage and 
no fear? 

Some among you I know well. I can see them lean back and 
sneer: "Oh, I don't care what is published about me in The 
Fatherland. The Fatherland is bought with German gold," 
and then they laugh and wink and jingle in their pockets their 
British gold made in a shameful trade. 

Do you know why this is published in The Fatherland ? I 
shall tell you. I can point out among you and your Wall Street 
friends the names of men who are part owners of the great New 
York dailies, who finance them, and dominate them with their 
advertising. Small wonder that the Money Trust has poisoned 
the public mind with the tainted syndicate news services sent 
broadcast throughout our country. 

The New York newspapers know that what I write about the 
Money Trust is true, but they do not dare to print the truth. 
And that is why it is printed in The Fatherland. 

Brothers, these men have ivealth and power, hut they are few. 
We are many, and as Edwin Laivrence Godkin tridy said: ''In 
the voice of the tnajority there is all the majesty of doom." 

You, who love your country, join us, work ivith us, for "the 
dark night cometh when no man can work." 



WALL STREET'S BRITISH GOLD PLOT 

I intend to tell an amazing story of a plot engineered by Lon- 
don bankrupts, with whom miserable men in "Wall Street have 
combined to ruin us — their own fellow-countrymen. I shall 
describe how all the insidious weapons of the Money Trust are 
being used to further this traitorous design. 

It was nearing the end of last June, when the munition 
makers of Wall Street found themselves in an embarrassing, if 
not terrible, position. Their trade in guns, bayonets and shrap- 
nel had swollen to enormous proportions; in fact, far beyond 
their initial calculations — approximating $2,000,000,000. Two 
Billion Dollars. And suddenly their customers, the Allies — Eng- 
land, France and Russia — could no longer pay them ! 

A series of bond flotations has just failed in London — Cana- 
dian, Australian and South African loans. A large war loan had 
just been launched in Threadneedle Street. Private cable advices 
reached Wall Street, with disquieting rumors concerning the sol- 
vency of the United Kingdom. 

Then Mr. Henry P. Davison, the partner of Mr. J. Pierpont 
Morgan, of ''Morgan, Grenfell & Co., London," departed hastily 
on the swiftest steamship bound for English shores. Mr. Davison 
investigated the situation abroad, and returned, accompanied by 
a bodyguard of private detectives, to protect him from bodily 
harm. He made his report. 

The conditions resulting from Britain's great war loan had 
heen found ghastly. The government had placed a minimum 
price of 65 on Consols, the premier security of the British Em- 
pire, to prevent their price from dropping to 40. And Consols 
were unsalable. 

Then the British government, driven to desperate straits, 
found itself obliged to scale down its great national debt, by 
forcing the holders of Consols to exchange them at the ratio of 
£75 in Consols for £50 in the new war loan. By this autocratic 

37 



38 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

act Englishmen were compelled to reduce the capital of their 
fortunes by one-third. A man who had invested £300,000 in 
Consols had now a fortune of but £200,000, although his income 
was temporarily higher. 

Bankers who hold London's finance in their hands were co- 
erced and blackmailed by their own government to exchange their 
securities. 

Many of them were the heaviest holders of Consols, and the 
threat w^as made that if they did not exchange, the minimum 
price of Consols would be lowered to 40, and they would be 
ruined. 

So England treats her own subjects, the holders of her best 
security. What will she do to the Americans who have been 
forced by pro-British hankers to take over already $500,000,000 
of her paper? 

And the proportion of the reserve to liabilities of the Bank of 
England had dropped during the week ended July 21st to 
18.09% ! This reserve in July, 1914, had been 52.4% ; in July, 
1913, 53.69% ; in July, 1911, 54.5%. Great Britain's credit was 
lost! She could send us no more gold in sufficient quantities to 
pay her debts to us. 

I am quoting the official figures. No man can dispute them. 
They are accessible to everyone, but not one of the Money Trust 
newspapers in New York dared to print the facts. For the 
Money Trust holds in its bank vaults loans on many of these 
dailies, or finances them, or would withdraw its immense adver- 
tising were they to offend. 

Then there came to a Wall Street banking house this private 
cable, which struck like a thunderbolt: ''A BOLD SCHEME OF 
INTERNATIONAL FINANCE IN LINE WITH THE BRIT- 
ISH CHANCELLOR'S HANDLING OF THE RECENT WAR 
LOAN IS TO BE APPLIED TO BRITAIN'S INTERNA- 
TIONAL OBLIGATIONS." 

This ''bold scheme" was the inauguration of Wall Street's 
British gold plot. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
who planned it, is the friend of Morgan, of "Morgan, Grenfell 
& Co., of London." 

England fears bankruptcy. And in this she is now using us 
as she used Belgium to fight her battles — and deserted her. As 
she used France to do her fighting — and now fails to aid her. 



WALL STREET'S BRITISH GOLD PLOT 39 

As she has used Russia and Italy, and will in turn desert them. 
And she is using us, to ruin us. 

WE PAY Britain's debt 

But England has promised to "finance" Belgium, France, 
Russia and Italy. True to her traditions, she has done it in this 
wise. She has said to the representatives of those four countries, 
through the Chancellor: "Gentlemen, I have no money to give 
you, but I shall use Morgan, my agent in Wall Street. I shall 
get him to force the Yankees to give you credit for your war 
munitions, and he and his friends will pay themselves by taking 
the money the Yankees have put in their banks. My financial 
agents shall take your agents to Wall Street, and there we will 
close the deal. ' ' 

And these financial agents are coming to us : Sir Edward 
Holden, Baron Reading, Sir Henry Babington Smith, and Basil 
B. Blaekett. They bring their French dupes. Octave Homberg 
and Ernest Mallet. 

It is a ease of "Hands Across the Sea"-^but this time the 
thieving hands are in our pockets. 

As well may be imagined, there was fear and trembling in 
the councils of the Money Trust bankers in Wall Street when 
they learned the orders the British Chancellor had issued to 
them through his British agent, Morgan. You see, they had ex- 
pected months before that England would crush Germany, and 
she had done nothing of the sort. They had expected it, as the 
Belgian dupes had expected it, as the French dupes had ex- 
pected it. 

But how were the Money Trust munition makers to be paid? 
England could not pay them ; France and Russia could not pay 
them. THEN THE MONEY TRUST BANKERS DECIDED 
THAT THEY MUST OBEY THE BRITISH CHANCEL- 
LOR'S INSTRUCTIONS; THAT THEY WOULD SAVE 
THEMSELVES BY MAKING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
PAY THEM FOR THE BAYONETS AND SHRAPNEL 
THEY HAD SOLD TO THE ALLIES. 

Quickly, secretly, hurriedly the members of the Money Trust 
began to "plant" the "paper" of England, France and Russia 
in their banks. And these banks, without the knowledge or con- 



40 



WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 



sent of their American depositors, gave the money of their 
depositors to the members of the Money Trust. 

When Britain, France and Russia default on their securities, 
or scale them down, as they have done with their securities at 
home, the American people will lose their money. It is the same 
old story over again. The Money Trust has the cash. What does 
it care for the people 1 

We have seen that the British Chancellor's bold scheme is 
to be "in line with his handling of the recent war loan." 



'^o 



"^•flt. 




Britain'^ C&anoellor gf tho Exohequsr [p"^/" 



tl.V.1*' 




The Amerloaa PeopIe*e Honsy 

$ 3,ooo,ooo»ooo 
The Aiserlaan PeopI^*e JSaaey 

t t i t * t 



&eae of the Plotter* 
In tbe Great Rail Street Coneplnot 



THo SaTlnge of our People are being Risked to All 
England in her Var* 



Through his handling of the war loan we have seen that English- 
men were forced to sacrifice one-third of their fortunes. What 
proportion of American fortunes are to be sacrificed to the 
British Chancellor's orders? 

On July 15th Dr. E. E. Pratt, Chief of the Bureau of Foreign 
and Domestic Commerce, before the Virginia Bankers' Associa- 
tion, estimated that the total loans of American money and 
credit to Europe, so far during the war, amounted to $500,000,- 
000. He suggested that these loans were an "economic fallacy." 

I quote the following letter from one of the leading trust 
companies in New York : 



WALL STREET'S BRITISH GOLD PLOT 41 

New York, July 27, 1915. 

''"We beg to state that this company is not lending its funds to 
any person, firm or corporation engaged in the manufacture or 
dealing in arms and ammunition to be used to further the inter- 
ests of any of the countries now at war. 

' ' It is, however, impossible for us to trace the actual amounts 
of money loaned, and it could happen that funds loaned by this 
company, to one person, could in turn be loaned by him to an- 
other, and in this manner the funds might be used for the pur- 
poses above mentioned. 

"We might add, however, that we hold for investment some 
of the securities of the French government, and have obligated 
ourselves to later take over a participation in a loan to the Domin- 
ion of Canada. 

'^It is the writer's opinion that you ivill find that all of the 
important financial institutions in this city own securities of this 
kind, on account of the safety of the investments and the profit- 
able character of such business." 

HALF A BILLION LOANED 

We have seen then that up to July 15th $500,000,000 of the 
American people's money had been loaned to countries whose 
solvency is doubtful, if not altogether gone. And all this had 
been done, swiftly, secretly by the Money Trust, through its 
power of holding the whiplash over financial institutions, in order 
that it might get back its money. 

But the public had by this time become uneasy. It had made 
inquiries at its banks and learned the truth. Then the Money 
Trust adopted the methods it knows so well to use in order to 
disabuse the public mind of any apprehensions. The people 
might become alarmed, you see, and withdraw their money from 
the banks. So reports were carefully spread throughout the 
country that the finances of England, France and Russia were in 
excellent shape, and that they were sending us vast sums of 
gold. 

Accordingly, on August 10th, the Money Trust, through one 
of its bankers, "planted" a story with glaring headlines in the 
New York Times, an organ which it uses for such purposes. The 
story dwelt on the importance of the shipment of $100,000,000 
in English gold to this country, and alleged that it had been 
sent to this side on a British warship commanded by Admiral 
Beatty. Through its syndicate news service, which has been 



42 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

serviceable to the Money Trust in misleading the public for the 
last year, the Times sent this story broadcast. 

Of course, everyone knows that British admirals skulk in 
British harbors for fear of the German submarine, and that the 
Bank of England would fear to separate itself from $100,000,000 
in gold because of its low reserves. And the next morning the 
truth could not be concealed, since the Sub-Treasury figures 
could not be falsified, and the reluctant official statement was to 
the effect that the shipment amounted to only about $19,000,000. 
But the lie had served its purpose in calming the public mind. 

On June 26th the Times had published a story that the Teu~, 
tonic Allies were bankrupt, that Austria could pay only 11% of 
her obligations, while Germany might be able to pay 16%. This 
was done also to bolster up the waning British credit. 

But this was not sufficient. It was to be impressed upon the 
unquiet mind of tlie American people that England was anxious, 
nay eager, to send here large quantities of gold. The public had 
to be reassured in order that the Money Trust could take its 
money from the public banks with impunity. So again, on 
August 13th, the Money Trust "planted" the following in its 
organ, the Times: 

AN INFAMOUS STATEMENT 

''We don't want gold/' said an international banker, who is 
taking an active part in negotiations with financiers in London 
and Paris. "The gold is of no use to us, and anight better stay 
in London. The banks in this country have unprecedented cash 
reserves, which are not doing any good. What is needed is a 
credit arrangement, under tvhich the money can he paid out on 
behalf of foreign nations." 

The subtle infamy of this statement can best be appreciated 
by the average American merchant who has tried to obtain credit 
from the Wall Street banks within the last twelve months. 

Who hides in the underbrush, clinking the coins in his neigh- 
bor's stolen purse, the while whispering: "We don't want gold. 
The gold is of no use ? ' ' 

I would ask this anonymous Wall Street banker why he skulks 
in hiding when he sends out a poisoned whisper intended to mis- 
lead the public mind ? I would ask him to step out in the open 
and reveal himself. For you see I know this man who hides 



WALL STREET'S BRITISH GOLD PLOT 43 

himself behind his anonymity, I have met him, and I know why 
he spoke those words. 

I would like to call to the attention of this anonymous banker 
the fact that eleven great mercantile houses went under in New 
York City in the last eighteen months, because his banks refused 
them credit. I would tell him that many of our great railroad 
systems went bankrupt in the same period because the Money 
Trust would not lend them money. 

I would ask this banker why he is so eager to give "foreign 
nations" the credit which he refuses to the American merchant 
and the American railroad man ? 

I would ask this same banker, Was it not you who "inspired" 
the following lines 1 — ' ' The amount of gold that it is proposed to 
send is stated by some correspondents (from London) to he as 
high as $250,000,000. Why, under circumstances that at present 
exist, this stupendous movement of the precious metal should he 
insisted upon in London is incomprehensible to large New York, 
banks and bankers. The gold is neither desired nor required on 
this side of the Atlantic." {Commercial and Financial Chron- 
icle, August 28th.) 

The bullion in the Bank of England last week was only about 
$335,000,000, so this statement of the financial authority of Wall 
Street that the English wished to send us $250,000,000 is pal- 
pably misleading. However, so work the corrupt Money Trust 
bankers, itching for the gold that England owes them and cannot 
pay them, while they befool their own countrymen in order that 
they may seize their countrymen's money to reimburse them- 
selves. 

Let us learn the truth of this thing. We shall transpose our- 
selves across the ocean to London and learn whether London 
"insists on sending us $250,000,000 gold against our will." 

WE MUST KEEP OUR GOLD 

Sir George Paish, addressing his fellow-countrymen in the 
Statist, says: "No country can purchase more than its income 
permits, unless it is able to borrow." Again he says: "We are 
glad to see that steps are to he taken to mohilize our gold re- 
serves." And he quotes the Prime Minister in the House of 
Commons. "/# is highly important for us to keep and to increase 



44 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

our supply of gold. We have already given directions that all 
these smaller payments which are made to those in our employ, 
are not to be made in gold, but in the paper currency." 

We read nothing here of London 's eagerness to send us gold. 
On the contrary, just before the departure of London's Snancial 
agents for Wall Street, there is a concerted move on the part of 
London's financial spokesmen to educate the Yankees to the fact 
that it is their duty to extend a vast credit to England by means 
of the money stored in American savings banks. They say : 
"The amount we may need to borrow in the United States 
is about $500,000,000. We might arrange a $400,000,000 or 
$500,000,000 issue in New York and Boston, and if necessary, in 
other American cities. A good deal of the amount we ask for 
must he tvJiat Americans call savings hank investments." 

Do you see the plot progressing for the spoliation of the 
American people ? There is first the over-extension of credit by 
the Wall Street munition makers; the concealment of London's 
war loan fiasco; the Money Trust's realization that it has been 
selling goods to bankrupt countries ; then come the British Chan- 
cellor 's instructions to the Money Trust bankers; swiftly ensues 
the secret seizure of $500,000,000 of the public money; and the 
Printed Lie is used to delude the people into the belief that Eng- 
land sends us great stores of gold ; the Hidden Voice of the 
anonymous banker is used to further the belief that we do not 
want this gold ; then comes the chorus from the financial wolves 
of London that we must give England credit ; now come the finan- 
cial agents, hands extended, asking for only half a billion 
more. 

Is it not the highest duty of every banker in the land to see 
that these financial agents are sent back with empty hands ? 

There is given here a list of seven Wall Street bankers, who 
possess great power and exercise wide influence. 

We see, on the one hand, that they officiate as managing di- 
rectors in the great war munitions companies, such as Bethlehem 
Steel and Distillers' Securities and Lackawanna Steel. On the 
other hand, they head large banking institutions, which handle 
public money and sell issues of securities to the people. Again, 
these banking institutions they control, act as fiscal agents for 
the war munitions concerns, such as American Can, Crucible 
Steel and Railway Steel Spring. 



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46 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

WHAT BANNARD SAID 

The list is headed by Mr. Otto T. Bannard, President of the 
New York Trust Company. Mr. Bannard, about twelve days ago, 
was responsible for something that must have been deplored by 
most of his countrymen. On the eve of leaving London, he made 
a public statement, saying : ' ' Great Britain will be able easily to 
float a loan of $500,000,000 in this country. The President, to 
uphold the dignity of his position, must take drastic steps. If 
President AVilson says war we will all be with him — the whole 
American people would be behind him." 

That a Wall Street banker, who takes his orders from the 
Money Trust, should give voice to such expressions, must render 
him an object of suspicion to his countrymen. Why should he so 
readily bestow upon England $500,000,000 of his country's 
money ? And why should he so light-heartedly breathe such sen- 
timents of war? 

Does Mr. Bannard know what war between this country and 
Germany would mean? Does he realize that fathers would be 
torn from their families and sent to detention camps, that sons 
would fight for their fathers, that mobs would roam the streets, 
and blood would be shed in every town and city of the land ? 

It is to be hoped that Mr. Bannard 's fellow bankers do not 
echo his sentiments. They are prosperous men. Some of them 
earn for their stockholders sixty per cent, dividends, and at 
Christmas time grateful directors present them with $150,000 
bonuses. In view of what their country does for them, should 
they not show their countrymen that Wall Street bankers in re- 
turn are ready to act for their country 's good ? 

There are men in Wall Street far more powerful than these 
seven bankers — the members of the Money Trust, who are plot- 
ting a great crime against the people. The Money Trust has 
already given to the Allies a credit of $500,000,000. It now pur- 
poses to give them $500,000,000 to $750,000,000 more. 

At a recent meeting of London bankers, Harold Cox, the 
political economist, said : ' ' The war will not end without England 
having to borrow two billion pounds. ' ' 

Two billion pounds — that is ten billion dollars. And from 
whom will England borrow it ? There is only one lending coun- 
try left. 



WALL STREET'S BRITISH GOLD PLOT 47 

Men of the Money Trust, if you lend these agents of the Allies 
one billion dollars, you may have to lend them ten. Th^n, when 
they default, we must go to war to save our loans. 

Men of the Money Trust, if you do this thing you will sow 
the wrath that reaps the whirlwind that may sweep you from 
your feet. The fate of men who defy the people is as well known 
as is human history. It would be lamentable if ever the day 
should come when the people would descend into Wall Street 
and swarm angrily about your white stone and marble palaces. 

I am one of those who believe that all the sins and crimes of 
men are expiated here on earth. Some members of the Money 
Trust have already committed crimes. They are already expi- 
ating them in the horror and loathing of their fellow-countrymen. 



OUR BANKRUPT "LADY OF THE SNOWS" 

This is a story telling how the cruel British satraps of Canada 
have brought ruin and misery upon a once fair land. With 
tempting bonuses and honeyed words, they lured simple and 
honest men from distant countries, to hew their woods and till 
the soil. 

Suddenly there came an order to these satraps from London 
financiers, the masters of Canada. And terror followed. Fathers 
were torn from wives and children and thrown into squalid 
prison camps, where +housands since have died. Others were 
forced with threats to go abroad again and fight and die for a 
foreign king whom they hated, and of whom others had not even 
heard. 

History has on its records no blacker crime than this. Three 
men, all of them "Colonial Knights," are deeply concerned in 
these affairs. They are the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Laird Borden, 
Premier of Canada; Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, born in Milwau- 
kee, Wis., now president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and 
■'Major General Sir" Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and De- 
fense. 

The Canadian Pacific Railway owns Canada, they say. It 
owns the Dominion 's greatest railway lines, its greatest hotels, its 
greatest steamship companies, and its most expensive land grants. 
It is owned in London. Thus London financiers own Canada. 

The concern of these financiers is to fill the land with people. 
They wish to sell farms from the land which was stolen from the 
Dominion. They wish to transport the products of farm and 
forest over the railway that they own. And they used to boast : 
"The Nineteenth Century belonged to the United States. The 
Twentieth Century will belong to Canada." And where is Can- 
ada to-day ? 

Canada has a population of 6,200,000 people. But it will not 
grow. For years agencies in Ireland and England drained those 

48 



OUR BANKRUPT ''LADY OF THE SNOWS" 49 

countries of stalwart sons, until whole villages were depopulated. 
But Canada 's sons and daughters crossed the border and came to 
live with us. Like Mr. James J. Hill, they despise the patronage 
of cheap titles, and can find no future in a land that is ruled by 
foreign plutocrats. 

The decline of British immigration and the reluctance of im- 
migrants to remain in the country, induced the London financiers 
to seek other fields of propaganda. They extended one of their 
steamship lines to Austria-Hungary and began a widespread agi- 
tation in Germany, Austria and Hungary to obtain farmers and 
artisans from those populous lands. They offered tempting in- 
ducements, money bonuses, gifts of homesteads to be paid off in 
installments, and even free passage. 

How well this movement, begun in 1910, succeeded, may be 
seen at a glance in the following table : 

Immigration to Canada 

1910 1914 Increase 

Austro-Hungarians 9,757 28,321 18,564 

Germans 1,533 5,537 4,004 

DEPORT THEIR COUNTRYMEN 

But what was the calibre of these immigrants of German and 
Austro-Hungarian origin, as compared with English immigrants'? 
Here is another table of the deepest significance. 

Rejections of Immigrants Deportations, after 
by Nationalities having been admitted 

From 1902 to 1914 From 1902 to 1914 

Germans 260 113 

Austro-Hungarians 745 279 

British i»" 1,411 iW 5,310 

The London w^orkman, narrow-chested, incapable, and unruly, 
was rejected and deported in great numbers, for the English 
race has become degenerate, while the Teutonic races proved 
themselves of inestimable value to Canada. 

When Europe's war began, there was in Canada a hetero- 
geneous populace, of men who had been persuaded to come to 
a new land by the fair promises of capitalists who hoped to profit 
from their labor. These people did not dream of ever returning 



50 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

to Europe to fight in England's war. And among them were 
Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians to the number of 229,147. 
But the war began, and there came a call to Canada's satrap, 
Borden, from his London masters: ''Intern all alien enemies. 
Give them no protection. We must terrify the Germans." 

The servile satrap paled at these instructions, but obeyed 
them. He sat aside and stayed his hand. In all Canadian towns 
and countrysides, from British Columbia to Quebec, the Canuck 
ran riot and typified him_self with brutal Cossack deeds. He 
burned houses, plundered shops, and stoned unoffending men, 
women and children in city streets and country roads. No one 
deterred him. German, Austrian and Hungarian men and 
women were dragged from their homes and slaughtered in the 
open. Native-born sons who defended foreign-born parents were 
slain, the daughters were brutalized by the mob. 

Then these fathers who survived were dragged to desolate 
detention camps, old sheds, open to winter winds and rains, 
flung into factory ovens, starved, and left unclad. The mortality 
among them has been frightful. The permanent illness worse. 
One-third of these men can never work for themselves again, — 
and they had been lured into this country, remember, by the soft 
persuasions of the men who had done them these wrongs. And 
their wives and children in rags to-day still roam the streets and 
byways of Canadian cities, butts of the mocking mob, begging in 
vain for food and shelter. 

It is very painful to me to recapitulate this sad story, but 
the reason is manifest. These dreadful deeds were done to a 
QUAHTER OF A MILLION TEUTONIC PEOPLES IN CAN- 
ADA. If war should come to us, they would be attempted upon 
THIRTY MILLIONS OF TEUTONIC PEOPLES IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 

For that is what J. Pierpont Morgan wished when he made 
himself Britain's war agent. That is what his associates in the 
Money Trust wished, and their cringing satellites in Wall Street, 
who feed upon their crumbs. That is what the war-mad British 
bankers in Wall Street wished, and the pro-British writers with 
their poisoned pens. It is what Otto T. Bannard, of the New 
York Trust Company wished when he went to London and said 
that the "President must take radical steps"; it was what James 
Gordon Bennett wished when he cabled from his home in Paris, 



OUR BANKRUPT "LADY OF THE SNOWS" 51 

urging mob attacks upon men of German blood ; it is what Adolph 
S. Oclis wishes, when he incites race hatred in his evil sheet, 
ruled by the Money Trust. 

After the mob and massacre in Canada, the Canuck stopped, 
breathless, terrified by his own work. Factories had been ruined, 
farms burned down, and unemployment began to raise its grisly 
head. The blow was beginning to recoil — upon the mob — upon 
the capitalist. 

Shaughnessy, the "American Knight," crawled cowering into 
the light in Winnipeg, and feebly said : ' ' The most vital problem 
confronting the government of the Dominion to-day is the immi- 
gration question." 

Canada's dark shadow 

And Canada's Minister of the Interior said : "It was perhaps 
to be expected that, after the strong light in which Canada has 
stood during the past few years, the shadow should be corre- 
spondingly dark." 

The shadow is now dark indeed. 

The blow was to recoil dreadfully upon the heads of men 
who had done evil thoughtlessly, incited thereto by capitalist 
masters. 

The dreadful fact was driven home to the plutocrats of Eng- 
land that English workmen, whom they had ground down to 
pauperism, would absolutely not go to war for them. They con- 
ferred in the Order in Council, and sent out instructions to their 
satraps in many lands: ''Drive in the men from the Colonies, and 
make them fight." 

Borden, Canada's satrap, trembled, but obeyed. He called 
in a simple and inexperienced man, Sam Hughes, Minister of 
Militia, and gave him orders. The war propaganda began, born 
of English falsehood and fear. Canada must save England. The 
Germans were but knaves and cowards. They had been defeated 
by the Belgians. The French and Russians had invaded the 
German country and crushed the foe. It would be an easy task. 
The Canadians could march into a defeated country trium- 
phantly, where there would be plunder and glory galore. 

Fifty thousand young men of Canada were sent to France 
and Gallipoli. Sam Hughes came to New York to sail after 
them. And in the simple way of an ignorant countryman, he 



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52 



OUR BANKRUPT "LADY OF THE SNOWS" 53 

boasted on the pier: "One hundred thousand of my brave boys 
can conquer Germany alone." 

Then were sent away 50,000 more young men of Canada's 
best. 

Time passed. Then came the dreadful story from Flanders 
— not through the press, for that is censored. But truth must 
out in its thousand ways. It was that Canadians had gone to 
face brave men who were not afraid to die. And the Canadians, 
deserted by English regiments, retreated from the field of battle, 
and they left behind them, on a ridge, 2,000 Montreal Highland- 
ers, who were unwilling to advance and unable to retreat. Noth- 
ing has ever been heard from them again. 

When the fearful news came to Ottawa, there was mourning 
and weeping throughout the Dominion. Sam Hughes in the 
meantime had returned. White-faced and pallid-lipped he stut- 
tered : ' ' They were heroes — that 's what they went over for. ' * 

Hughes later slunk back to England. He was to be rewarded 
by his masters. 

But the order from London had been : ' ' Drive in the men 
from the Colonies, and make them fight." The satrap, Borden, 
must obey. He called in his henchman, the "American Knight, " 
Shaughnessy. The employers must be mobilized. Canada was 
tired of the war. The men would not enlist. But the Canadian 
Pacific Railway, owned by London plutocrats, must save them. 

On August 1st, this note was placed in the pay envelopes of 
employees of the Canadian Pacific : ' ' Your King and country 
need you; we don't." Men, young enough to fight, were notified 
that they must enlist or quit their jobs. This was done in all 
companies owned by the railway, its hotels, its factories. It was 
done in the departments of the Dominion, and it was compelled 
to be done by all the large employers of labor in the cities. 

The plutocrats were forcing men to war. Irishmen, who hated 
England, must fight for her, or starve. In Montreal, a mob of 
5,000 unmarried men who had been discharged by their employ- 
ers for failing to enlist, held a meeting at which they denounced 
the newspapers advocating compulsory service, and they attacked 
newspaper offices, breaking their windows. Several days later, a 
soldier, bearing a recruiting placard, was mobbed in the Champ 
de Mars. Soldiers attacked the mob and arrested its leaders. 
V The Canucks were now turning on their masters. An ugly 



54 WAR PLOTTERS OF AVALL STREET 

story had come back to Canada. It was the order of Lieutenant- 
Colonel Taylor, Adjutant of the Fourth Division of the Third 
Canadian Infantry Brigade. ' ' During the last battle, several of 
the division surrendered to the enemy. It is the first and most 
urgent duty to shoot down every man that tries to surrender, no 
matter who it may be. If the group is large enough to give 
promise of success, artillery fire must at once be turned in that 
direction, ' ' 

And Canadian newspapers were printing their "must" 
stories, ''All Are Heroes In Princess Pat's Regiment," and 
speaking of "courage" and "fortitude" and the "spirit of de- 
termination that must win. ' ' 

And they are printing the same stories in Canada to-day, for 
the censorship is stricter there than in England, 

But now the Canadian people "know." 

They know the 6ost. The cost has ruined them. 

One hundred and fifty thousand men have been sent abroad 
by Canada. Few of them will ever return. 

A year ago, in the first flush of the war fever, artificially 
stimulated by the corrupt English press, the Dominion boastfully 
granted the highest pay ever given to soldiers, $1.10 per day. 
Widows and orphans were liberally provided for — $22 a month 
for the widow, and $5 a month for each child. Annual pensions 
for wounded or disabled ran from $264 to $100 for the rank and 
file, according to the nature of the disability. So whether death 
came to the soldier, or he were disabled, or left widow or orphans, 
the $1.10 practically went on for perpetuity. 

THE RUINOUS CHARGE 

This was thoughtlessly done. It was kindly meant. But it 
spells ruin to Canada. It is an annual charge of $60,225,000. 
And this military burden upon the backs of 6,000,000 people! 

Before the war began, Canada had a national debt of $544,- 
391,000, and annual interest and other charges of $15,000,000. 
When the war began, the Dominion expended $20,000,000 in the 
initial equipment of her men. She made advances to finance 
purchases made in Canada by British, French, Russian and 
New Zealand and South African governments, of $25,000,000. 

When Borden interned the Teutonic farmers, who had, by 



OUR BANKRUPT ''LADY OF THE SNOWS'* 55 

their labor, enriched the Canadian Pacific Railway, a catastrophe 
happened to the London plutocrats and to the entire Dominion. 
The gross earnings of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1914 
amounted to $129,814,000. In the statement issued for 1915, 
these earnings had shrunk to $97,500,000, a loss of $32,300,000. 
Operating expenses were at once cut by the frightened capitalists. 
They cut them $22,588,000, which sum had previously been paid 
out in wages and expenses. The surplus of the great railway has 
shrunk by $9,600,000. 

But worse was to come to Canada's railways. Despite the 
warnings of men who knew, the Canadian government largely 
took over the charges and responsibilities of two of her lines, the 
Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern railroads. She 
guaranteed the securities of both. They are not now earning 
their fixed charges. "The government must step in to avoid 
disaster," says Finance Minister White. Canada must now take 
over the two lines to prevent their bankruptcy. 

Bankruptcy has overtaken the timber and lumber industries 
of British Columbia. The great real estate boom that prevailed 
for years has collapsed. Canada has borrowed capital for muni- 
cipal and industrial enterprises to such an extent that the annual 
tax in interest alone is about $140,000,000. Towns are now 
obliged to ask for time to meet the interest due on their bonds. 
Cities are threatened with bankruptcy. A receivership is an- 
nounced in contemplation for the City of Montreal, the bonds of 
which are held by many banks in the United States. A com- 
mittee has been formed to consult with the distracted satrap, 
Borden, to devise some means for meeting the obligations of the 
city. 

But the London plutocrats who own Canada have no mercy. 
They tried to stem the tide of the fall in demand sterling in New 
York, which is costing untold millions to English capital. They 
could not send gold from the imperilled gold reserve of the Bank 
of England, so they ordered their satraps to strip Canada of her 
gold and send it to New York. And the Dominion, staggering 
under her financial burdens, which she is no longer able to bear, 
sent the gold to New York at the behest of her masters, more 
than $100,000,000. 

These matters are mostly kept from the newspapers. New 
censorship regulations have been enforced in Canada, The pub- 



56 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

lication of military, naval or financial information is prohibited, 
as well as criticism of the British government or her Allies. 
For violations, the offending papers may be seized and sup- 
pressed. 

But so many facts can no longer be concealed. Canada has 
refused any longer to give credit to her master's ally, Russia, 
for Russia, also, is bankrupt. "We simply cannot do it," said a 
Canadian banker months ago. ''Even if the government did 
help by issuing Dominion notes and thereby inflating bank circu- 
lation, with the evils attendant, banks cannot wisely tie up 
Canadian money in Russian securities. ' ' 

Since this man spoke, the evil he feared has com^^ over Can- 
ada, and not through the financing of Russian orders. The 
Canadian government has issued Dominion notes to an unprece- 
dented extent, to an extent, indeed, that has ruined her credit 
and resources — inflation by the reckless issue of paper currency, 
the stupid subterfuge that always ruins governments, such as 
Russia under Catherine the Great. The London market, which 
in past times jealously supplied all Canada's wants, is now closed 
to her. The Englishmen who ruled Canada are now ruined 
themselves, and come to us begging for alms. And now Canada 
has come to us. Morgan, Britain's agent, was instructed by his 
British employers to lend to Canada, and he obeyed in his char- 
acteristic way. He could not refuse, much as he might wish to 
do so, for Canada's gold had been siphoned into his vaults. 
Morgan lent Canada the money of the American people by forc- 
ing American banks to participate in Canadian loans. 

OUR FORCED LOANS TO CANADA 

From last December, until the end of ]\Iay, American banks, 
at the order of the Money Trust, a member of which is the local 
agency of the Bank of Montreal in Wall Street, took over Cana- 
dian securities valued at $85,900,000. That value has since 
shrunk terribly. But since then, other loans have come in swift 
succession, such as $11,500,000 of Canadian Railway notes, issued 
by a railway that Finance Minister White cf Canada says "is 
facing disaster." Our Rock Island, and Missouri Pacific, and 
other great American lines, remember, could not obtain loans 
from the pro-British bankers in Wall Street to ' ' save them from 



OUR BANKRUPT "LADY OF THE SNOWS" 57 

disaster." But Wall Street is now British soil, dominated by- 
Money Trust plutocrats, who make larger profits by lending the 
American people's money to the English than they could by 
lending it to the American merchant or railroad man. Finally 
Morgan forced Wall Street to take a $45,000,000 Canadian gov- 
ernment loan. 

Canada has placed these loans with the Money Trust at 
ruinous rates of interest, as all bankrupts must do. For this is 
the only market in the world in which she can borrow, and we 
have taken 80 per cent, of her securities. Canada has now 
obligated herself to annual charges of more than $250,000,000. 
She has borrowed from us more than $150,000,000 in seven 
months. She has contracted debts since the war began of $527,- 
525,000. She had a national debt before the war began of 
$544,300,000. Canada now owes more than $1,100,000,000. 

And all this debt is laid upon the backs of 6,000,000 bankrupt 
people. Every adult male in Canada owes on behalf of his 
town, his province or his county more than $1,000. Much of this 
sum represents an annual tax. None of it includes his private 
debts. And Canada's factories are closed, her great industries 
ruined, her cities filled with unemployed and bitter men. 

All the satrapies of Great Britain have been brought to a 
similar pass through the German submarine warfare. The 
Indian government announces that its budget will create a deficit 
of $15,000,000. England cannot help. Australia, instead of 
exporting, is importing 12,000,000 bushels of wheat. The 
Colonial governments have sent frantic pleas to Whitehall for 
ships to transport their frozen meats. New Zealand is prostrate. 
All through the United Kingdom the butcher shops are closing ; 
prices of foodstuft's have doubled, and this has caused strikes 
among industrial workers that cannot be adjusted. 

And still the hysterical asseverations come from England's 
public men: ''The German submarine warfare has failed." 

We have taken a mortgage on Canada. She cannot pay us. 
Shall ive foreclose that mortgage? 

The satrap, Borden, went to England for six weeks to discuss 
this crisis with his masters. The other day he returned, bringing 
with him his poor henchman, Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia. 
These two pitiful figures slunk to an obscure hotel in New York. 
With lined faces, and downcast spirits, they still spoke of 



58 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

"heroes" and "courage" and "fortitude" and the "spirit of 
determination that must win. ' ' 

This pair had sent to death and disaster more than 100,000 
of their countrymen at the behest of cruel masters. They had 
heaped upon their country a new and crushing debt of more than 
half a billion. They put an end to immigration. 

But the Minister of Militia had at last received his "reward." 

No longer plain "Sam" Hughes. Say now, Major General, 
Sir Sam Hughes. 

A commission and a knighthood! 

May these cheap favors bring him joy! 



VI. 
THE CRIME OF THE YEAR 1915 

In an inclosed garden just east of Madison Avenue, in Thirty- 
sixth Street, rises a marble building in the museum style. It 
was built by the Elder Morgan as a storehouse for his works of 
art. It is known as the Morgan Library. It has been the scene 
of strange events. 

It. was here that Morgan, in the panic of 1907, loaned to the 
banks of Wall Street the millions he obtained from the United 
States Treasury, making great profits for himself on the bor- 
rowed money of the people. It was here that late one night a 
whispered word went forth, that struck the next day like a thun- 
derbolt and caused the tragic run on the Trust Company of 
America, which bled a $60,000,000 institution dry. 

The Morgan Library is now owned by Morgan's son, the 
agent of a foreign government. 

On the night of September 11th, 1915, a street crowd had 
run together at this corner of Murray Hill. These people 
watched the lighted front of the marble building with uneasy 
faces. With the dumb instinct of the mob, they had scented the 
fact that there was being staged here an event that threatened a 
terrible danger to the future bf their country. 

At intervals vehicles rolled up, the iron gates swung back, 
and a dull murmur rose from the street throng as it recognized 
some familiar personage who had alighted. 

But let us not mix with the rabble. Let us penetrate the 
marble portal and see the parts that our masters, the plutocrats, 
are playing. They are giving an ovation to titled personages. 
And monstrous as it may seem, one finds among the latter Amer- 
icans, who have renounced republican principles, accepted 
foreign '' knighthoods," and sworn allegiance to a foreign king. 

Here, in the spacious apartment, we see J. Pierpont Morgan, 
the accredited agent of England, France and Russia for the 
purchase and manufacture of war munitions. Beside him is his 
partner, Henry P. Davison, just returned from London, where 

59 



60 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

he has been conferring in secret with the heads of the British 
government. 

With that species of adulation that is deserving only to the 
aristocracy, they bid welcome to* Sir Robert Borden, Premier of 
Canada, who has won the gratitude of the British government 
by herding in detention camps the Teutonic farmers of Canada. 
Then comes Thomas, Lloyd George's representative ir the 
' ' States ' ' in the supervision of American industries in the inter- 
est of England, soon to be knighted as a reward. 

The next arrival is " Sir ' ' Thomas Shaughnessy, President 
of the Canadian Pacific Railway, once an American, born in 
Milwaukee, Wis., now a Colonial Knight. And we see Americans 
bowing and scraping before this man who has spurned his 
American citizenship. 

Now comes a murmur of awe and reverence from the Wall 
Street bankers assembled here. The lions of the evening have 
arrived — the foreign bankers sent here by bankrupt Britain to 
get the use of the American people's gold that Morgan, their 
agent, has promised them : Baron Reading, once plain Ruf us 
Isaacs; Sir Edward Hopkinson Holden, Sir Henry Babbington 
Smith and Basil B. Blackett. They have in their train two 
French bankers, to whom they have promised the Yankees' 
money, if France will continue to fight England's battles. 

An hour passes now in Morgan's Library. There is a low 
hum of voices, of pledges made on foreign soil, now renewed and 
substantiated in the home of Britain's agent. 

What is being concocted here in secret by private bankers? 

Our country is being committed, its safety, its fortune, its 
wealth, its future — and yet we, the people, have nothing to say. 
We have voiced protests. They have been ignored. We have 
made pleas. They have been met with cynical laughter. Our 
destinies are in the hands of plutocratic masters. 

But the deed is done. The hour has passed. One hears from 
the outer court that the iron gates are swinging back again. 
There is the roll of wheels. Another chain of vehicles is arriving. 
They are bringing other guests. Who are these ? 

WHO COMES NOW? 

These are men whose smallest actions concern us deeply, since 
they involve the safety and happiness of all we hold most dear. 



THE CRIME OF THE YEAR 1915 61 

They are the heads of our largest savings banks, in which are 
stored the results of our labor ; they are the presidents and man- 
agers of great life insurance companies, in which our existence is 
pledged; they are the officials of fire insurance companies, of 
powerful banks with which we do business. 

I shall name them, but only as their names have been made 
known. And that we may know them better, I shall prefix their 
names with the institutions they represent, in which are deposited 
the money of the people. 

THE MEN WHO CAME AT MORGAN 's CALL 

Savings Banks: 

Albany Savings Institution, Director, Charles H. Sabin ; Bow- 
ery Savings Bank, Second Vice-President, "William A. Nash ; 
Bank for Savings, Trustees, August Belmont and Robert Bacon ; 
Greenwich Savings Bank, Trustee, Albert H. Wiggin; Union 
Dime Savings Bank, Trustee, John R. Hegeman. 

Insurance Companies: 

Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co., Trustee, Charles A. Peabody; 
City of N. Y. Insurance Co., Director, Albert H. Wiggin ; Fidel- 
ity-Phenix Fire Ins. Co., Directors, Francis L. Hine, Charles 
H. Sabin and Albert H. Wiggin ; Fidelity & Casualty Co., Di- 
rector, Alex. J. Hemphill; German-American Insurance Co., 
Director, Samuel McRoberts; Home Insurance Co., Director, 
Lewis L. Clark; Home Life Insurance Co., Directors, William 
A. Nash and Francis L. Hine ; Mutual Life Insurance Co., Trus- 
tees, George F. Baker and Charles A. Peabody, President ; Metro- 
politan Life Insurance Co., President, John R. Hegeman; Trus- 
tees, Otto T. Bannard and Albert_ JI, JWiggin ; N. Y. Title 
Insurance Co., Director, Lewis L. Clark; Pennsylvania Fire 
Insurance Co., Edward T. Stotesbury; Penn Mutual Life In- 
surance Co., 'Trustee, Edward T. Stotesbury ; Prudential In- 
surance Co., President, Forrest F. Dryden; Queen Insurance 
Co., Director, William A. Nash; Royal Insurance Co., William 
A. Nash; United States Casualty Company, Director, Forrest 
F. Dryden. 



62 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 



Banks: 

American Exchange National Bank, President, Lewis L. 
Clark ; Chase National Bank, President, Albert H. Wiggin ; 
Director, Francis L. Hine; Chatham & Phenix National Baiik, 
August Belmont; First National Bank, President, Francis L. 
Hine ; Liberty National Bank, Directors, Albert H. Wiggin jnd 
Francis L. Hine ; Metropolitan Bank, Director, John R. Hege- 
man; National City Bank, Vice-President, Samuel McRoberts; 
President, Frank A. Vanderlip ; National Bank of Commerce, 
Directors, Frank A. Vanderlip, Alvin W. Krech, Francis L. 
Hine, Charles A. Peabody and Albert H. Wiggin ; Riggs National 
Bank, Director, Frank A. Vanderlip; Union Exchange National 
Bank, Directors, Albert H. Wiggin and Charles H. Sabin. 

Trust Companies: 

Astor Trust Company, Directors, Francis L. Hine, Albert H. 
Wiggin, Charles A. Peabody and George F. Baker; Bankers' 
Trust Company, Directors, Francis L. Hine and Albert H. Wig- 
gin ; Brooklyn Trust Company, Trustee, Francis L. Hine ; Farm- 
ers' Loan & Trust Co., Directors, Charles A. Peabody, Frank A. 
Vanderlip and George F. Baker; Fidelity Trust Company, 
Edward T. Stotesbury; Girard Trust Company, Edward T. 
Stotesbury; Guaranty Trust Company, President, Charles PL 
Sabin ; Chairman, Alex. J. Hemphill ; Directors, Albert H. Wig- 
gin, Charles A. Peabody and George F. Baker ; Hamilton Trust 
Company, Trustee, John R. Hegeman; New York Trust Com- 
pany, President, Otto T. Bannard ; Title Guarantee & Trust Co., 
William A. Nash and Charles A. Peabody; United States Trust 
Company, Lewis Cass Ledyard. 

Surety Companies: 

American Surety Company, Trustees, Alex. J. Hemphill, 
William A. Nash, Francis L. Hine and Albert H. Wiggin ; Amer- 
ican Security & Trust Co., Frank A. Vanderlip ; First Security 
Company, President, George F. Baker; National Surety Com- 
pany, Directors, Samuel McRoberts, Alvin W. Krech and John 
R. Hegeman. 



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64 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE UNEASY 

It is a matter of distinct uneasiness to the American people 
that the heads and trustees and managing directors of tlie great 
institutions in which their fortunes are bound up, should in these 
days and on a mission such as this, visit the private house of the 
agent of a foreign government, to confer in secret with emissaries 
sent by that government to this country for the purpose of 
obtaining a huge credit, based on the moneys lying in savings 
banks, insurance companies arid banks of deposit representing 
the property of the American people. 

It instils fear in the public mind when such men associate 
themselves with the House of Morgan, whose fortunes are com- 
mitted to foreign lands and foreign interests. 

This fear of the public is not the fear which, in 1913, caused 
the appointment of the Pujo Committee to investigate the con- 
centration of control of money and credit. It is now become a 
fear more keen and poignant than before. It has caused a 
sudden growth of radicalism in this country, which is assuming 
proportions that are alarming. 

For Morgan is serving a foreign king; he cannot serve two 
masters. 

Under his guidance, committed as he is, American interests 
must suffer. Is it not then a matter of dreadful peril that at 
Morgan's beck and call, the financiers, controlling our greatest 
institutions, should lend him their vast influence and proffer him 
the funds w^hich have been entrusted to them by the people? 

Was it not thought that by the abolition of the interlocking 
directorates the Morgan group would be shorn of their illegal 
power? Yet here w^e see that they still exercise their malignant 
influence. 

I shall quote from the conclusions of the Pujo Committee, 
after its investigation of the Money Trust : "It accordingly 
behooves us to see to it that the bankers who require and are 
bidding for the money held by our banks, trust companies and 
life insurance companies to use in their ventures are not per- 
mitted to control and utilize these funds as though they were 
their own. 

"At best it is a dangerous situation, with its boundless 
temptations and opportunities, no matter how high or lofty 



THE CRIME OF THE YEAR 1915 65 

may be the sense of responsibility of those who hold the power. 
It is too vast and perilous a power to be safely intrusted to the 
hands of any man or set of men, be he or they ever so patriotic 
or unselfish. We have no right to assume that he or they or their 
successors will never use it in his or their own interest and to 
the detriment of the public welfare." 

We see that the day has now come when these successors are 
using this power in their own interest and to the detriment of 
the public welfare. These foreign agents are working in secret. 
They tell us insolently that they are working for our country's 
good. Can we believe them? No, we cannot take the word of 
Morgan & Co., wlio have earned the distrust and condemnation 
of their fellow countrymen in the management of the New Haven 
and Erie Railroads and the perpetration of the Cincinnati, Ham- 
ilton & Dayton scandal. 

I urge upon all the readers of The Fatherland to write to 
their Congressmen, demanding a Federal investigation into the 
recent acts of J. P. Morgan & Co., on behalf of their client, Eng- 
land. .Congress must drag these secret financial transactions — 
which affect our most vital interests — into the open light of day. 

But we must go farther. We must safeguard our personal 
interest from the thieving fingers of the Money Trust. 

In the insurance investigation of some few years ago, it was 
vividly impressed upon the managers of such companies that 
they must not act ivithout the authority of their policyholders. 
It is to be hoped that they have not forgotten this wise counsel. 

Let every man or woman who is a policyholder in any of the 
companies above enumerated, write at once to the responsible 
heads of such companies, ashing whether their funds are being 
used to finance the war munitions of foreign countries. 

Let every depositor in the savings banks in the above list 
address a similar request to his official representatives. 

Let every depositor in the above banks and trust companies 
take similar action. 

A PATRIOTIC DUTY 

Citizens, this is your patriotic duty. It is your right. The 
banking power exists only in the money of the people. The 
people have the right under the law to demand that such power 
be not misused. 



66 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Protest against this commission of an unneutral act ! Protest 
against the illegal use of the American people's savings for the 
furtherance of a war on behalf of Russian Cossacks. Protest 
against the use of our money for the arming of African and 
Asiatic savages by their decadent French and English masters, 
who wage war by bringing blacks into a white man 's country. 

We, in the East, are doing our share. Do you, in the West, 
do yours? And it is with deep gratification that we see the 
sturdy West responding. We are Americans still — not the helots 
of pro-British plutocrats. 

The action of Dr. Charles Hexamer, of Philadelphia, head of 
the National German-American Alliance, in his open protest, 
urging citizens to thwart the loan, has brought dismay to the 
English bankers of Wall Street. 

Mr. Jeremiah O'Leary, President of the American Truth 
Society, has demanded of Baron Reading, the head of the foreign 
banking delegation, what assurance American investors would 
have, when the Anglo-French notes fall due, that Great Britain 
will not tender Confederate bonds in payments. 

Our logic is unanswerable. 

For an entire year, the Morgan group have been our pluto- 
cratic rulers. They have had their own way. Now is coming 
the reaction. The public has awakened to its peril. This morn- 
ing was announced the resignation of one of the Morgan partners, 
Mr. Willard Straight. 

The panic of fear and rage reigns in the Morgan camp. On 
September 15th, through one of their organs, they issued a 
WARNING to those who opposed them. They applied an epithet 
to those who worked against the loan to their foreign clients, and 
their warning ended in these words: 

THE THREAT OP REPRISAL 

*'The potentialities of retaliation are not the exclusive pos- 
session of any body or organization in the United States. This 
fact is not without a definite present significance. The weapons 
that hyphenated Americans are now urged to raise against their 
neighbors are not the subject of monopoly, and it would be 
lamentable in the last degree if patience and forbearance should 
take the form of reprisal." 



THE CRIME OP THE YEAR 1915 67 

The following day they sent a man to James J. Hill to enlist 
his support, with the suggestion that "reprisals be tried upon 
pro-German interests by withholding American money." 

Mr. Hill shook his head. ''That gun ivould kick harder than 
it ivoidd shoot," he said. 

When the man was sent to Mr. Hill in the endeavor to foment 
discord and stifle opposition to the Morgan loan, he was not sent 
aright. 

Again the same organ came out with a threat from the 
Morgan group. Sections were quoted from the Penal Law of 
New York State, in the false efforts to intimidate opponents to 
the Morgan loan. 

To this The Fatherland must respond by the following 
quotation from Section 5281 of the Revised Statutes of the 
United States: 

THE LAW IN THE CASE 

''Section 5281. Accepting a foreign commission. 

' ' Every citizen of the United States who, within the territory 
or jurisdiction thereof, accepts and exercises a commission to 
serve a foreign Prince, State, colony, or people, in war, by land 
or by sea, against any Prince, State, colony, district or people 
with whom the United States are at peace, shall be deemed guilty 
of a high misdemeanor and shall be tined not more than $2,000 
and imprisoned not more than three years." 

Let the partners of J. P. Morgan & Co., ponder this. Does it 
apply to them ? 

As yet the Republic exists. As yet the plutocrats have not 
exercised the power to crush free speech and freedom of opinion. 

Since that memorable meeting in the Morgan Library, many 
other gatherings have been held by Wall Street bankers with the 
financial emissaries from England. But the subsequent meetings 
have always been held in different places, and in secret. We see 
them meet at the Hotel Biltmore at midnight. Why ? We learn 
that these Wall Street bankers leave their institutions and 
secretly board Morgan 's yacht, the Corsair, in the East River, to 
hold their conferences for the disposition of the public's funds. 

Why do these men work in fear and secret? 

How do they purpose to work in the dark after time, when a 
crime against their own countrymen has been committed? 



VII. 

THE SHAM PEACE SOCIETIES 

I was walking on Seventh Ave., New York, one Winter's 
night, some four short years ago — it was in December, 1911, if 
memory serves me right — when my attention M^as called to the 
movement of great numbers of people. I saw them pouring into 
an auditorium. 

I am always interested in the guiding spirit of a throng, so I 
made myself a part of this concourse. I entered the auditorium. 
It was filled to the galleries. I seated myself, and, turning to my 
neighbor, asked for the purpose of the gathering. 

" It 's a peace meeting, ' ' he replied. 

I turned my attention to the stage. I saw there the conven- 
tional semi-circle of three rows of chairs. Seven men were seated 
in the foremost row. I can see their faces as plainly to-day as on 
that Winter 's night, four years ago : — ^Andrew Carnegie, Henry 
Clews, J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas W. Lamont, George F. 
Baker, Frederic R. Coudert and Dr. Lyman Abbott. 

Now I knew the origin and histories of these men, and I 
wondered what had brought them together there. I listened to 
some of the speakers, and gathered that they were making an 
appeal to the audience to give their support to some arbitration 
treaties which these seven men wished to make between our 
country, England and France. Then I understood. 

Suddenly, at the conclusion of one of the addresses, a man 
arose from a chair in the semi-circle on the stage, and advanced 
to the footlights. He was a mild appearing man, slender of fig- 
ure, and wearing long mustaches. He began to speak. All in 
that large audience listened breathlessly, for it was evident that 
this speech was not on the prepared programme. 

The man at the footlights sj^oke: — "I wish to offer as a 
substitute that this meeting approve the resolution already 
adopted by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in oppo- 
sition to the treaties hetiveen Great Britain and France, such 
treaties heing breeders of tvar. This arbitration movement is 

68 • 



THE SHAM PEACE SOCIETIES 69 

aimed not in the interest of peace, but in that of war with 
another power, — Germany. ' ' 

The audience sat stunned for a moment. Then came a burst 
of cheers from the galleries, followed by others from the orchestra 
chairs: — "How about Germany? This is all aimed at Ger- 
many ! ' ' 

A great uproar ensued. The chairman was compelled to 
^dismiss the gathering. The audience had not given its approval 
to the plan cherished by the seven men seated there on the public 
stage. 

Now this meeting became historic in the annals of the peace 
agitations of that day. I remember my surprise at the upshot 
of the morrow. For certain newspapers controlled by "Wall 
Street bankers tried, for some secret reason, to heap obloquy on 
the heads of the men who had objected to the proposed treaties. 
They called them "ruffians" and "hoodlums." 

"Why was that done 1 

Here was an American citizen who had spoken in support of 
the wishes of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, of 
the Congress of the United States. That was certainly a patriotic 
duty. And free speech is not prohibited in America, nor is 
liberty of thought. 

The man who had so spoken was a New York lawyer. Yet 
Adolph S. Ochs, in his newspaper, assailed him in these words : — 
"He is a bad American. In fact, he is not an American at all. 
We mean that he is not an American citizen. For all we know, 
he may have been born here, but he must be reborn." 

There seemed a sinister purpose in all three attacks, and 
dreadful doubts succeeded in the public mind concerning these 
"peace" negotiations. It was felt instinctively that foreign 
influences were at work to compromise the future of our country. 

Time passed. But the foreign agitation kept secretly at work. 

THOSE SEVEN MEN 

In the meantime, keep in mind, indelihly, the names of those 
seven men ivhom I noted on the stage front of Carnegie Hall, 
that troubled Winter's night. 

Men who nurse shameful ends know neither haste nor rest. 
The schemes of these seven men had been frustrated at the 



70 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Carnegie Hall meeting. But the result of that meeting was the 
formation of two "peace" societies, the American Peace and 
Arbitration League and the New York Peace Society. How 
strange to note that the presidents of both ivere Englishmen, 
Henry Clews and Andretv Carnegie. 

Wall Street's English bankers are far-sighted men. They 
have resources and cunning. They had made a shade of differ 
entiation between these two organizations, in the hope that they 
might meet the objections of suspicious or unsuspecting Amer- 
icans. 

It was on January 25th, 1913, that w^e find the "peace" 
friends meeting again. And it is again in Carnegie Hall. There 
we find two members of this Group of Seven, the two English- 
men, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clews. By this time they 
had enlisted the services of Dr. Charles W. Eliot, once of Har- 
vard. They expressed their extreme disappointment at the 
failure of the peace treaties they had planned to make between 
England, France and the United States. Mr. Carnegie, however, 
asserted his conviction that the end of all war was in sight, and 
said that he believed that the doctrine of the exemption of 
private property on the seas was soon to be a reality, since it 
had been approved by eight of the nations and needed only the 
sanction of Great Britain.* 

Six days, later, Mr. Carnegie gathered a meeting of his 
(American) New York Peace Society, and appealed to the 
American people to force the repeal by Congress of its legislation 
governing the Panama Canal tolls, which was detrimental to 
England's interests. Not like the "hoodlum" who had sup- 
ported the cause of the American Senate Committee on Foreign 
Relations, Mr. Carnegie appealed to the American people to 
destroy an act of Congress. But the Wall Street newspapers 
did not call Mr. Carnegie a "hoodlum" or a "ruffian." Mr. 
Adolph S. Ochs treated him most tenderly. 

At this meeting, Robert Underwood Johnson, vice-president 
of the ' ' Peace ' ' Society, declared : ' ' For the first time in their 
lives, as they have confessed to me, Americans ( ?) could not 
look Englishmen fair in the face because of the interpretation 
put by our Congress upon our treaty obligations." 



* V^ho has confiscated $15,000,000 worth of American meat cargoes, and 
hundreds of miUions of American cotton cargoes? 



THE SHAM PEACE SOCIETIES 71 

Twenty-three days later (still in 1913, remember) Henry 
Clews, the English President of the American (?) Peace and 
Arbitration League, called a gathering of his people, among 
the members of the committee being Andrew Carnegie, Dr. 
Lyman Abbott, Dr. Charles W. Eliot and FRANCIS LYNDE 
STETSON. Mr. Carnegie predicted that the day of universal 
peace was not far distant, and expressed the hope that the differ- 
ences ivith England might he arbitrated. 

Then came the great war in Europe. When had the English 
plotters expected it? Before this, at Agadir? Who can sound 
the secrets of human thought ? 

Now it was found necessary to bring about an alteration in 
this English plot. There was no longer a question of "peace." 
Now the secret agitation of Wall Street's English bankers was 
to be on behalf of the "patriotic" duty of national defense. 
Patriotism, they say, is the last refuge of scoundrels. The 
world's history always shows how plutocrats play upon the 
sincere patriotic instincts of their countrymen, that they may 
make money out of the intoxication of the heedless rabble. 

We shall see Roman history now repeat itself. 

THE PATRIOTS MEET 

One hundred and fifty "American patriots" assembled at the 
Hotel Belmont in December, 1914, and organized the National 
Security League. It is necessary, of course, that somebody must 
advance the funds for any public movement. Among the com- 
mittee chosen were Mr. Frederic R. Coudert, counsel for the 
French government, and Mr. Herbert L. Satterlee, the brother- 
in-law of J. Pierpont Morgan. The committee demanded that 
the government at once spend $100,000,000 on armament. 

At this meeting, Mr. George Haven Putnam, an Englishman, 
London feorn, spoke as follows: 

"Suppose England is crushingly defeated in this war, and 
her enemies wish to invade Canada. A big fleet and expedi- 
tionary force appears oft' New York and asks permission to march 
an invading army up the Hudson Valley. We refuse. You 
can see all the towns along the Hudson River in ruins. 

"A military authority in Berlin recently said that when 
Germany had obtained a coaling station on the American coast, 
there would be no difficulty in smashing the American coast 
cities and crushing the Republic." 



72 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Of course we all know that no Berlin authority ever made 
such a statement, and that no army intending to invade Canada 
would be so idiotic as to wish to march up the Hudson Valley. 
But this statement was made by this English agitator simply in 
the interest of the English propaganda in order to create fear 
in the minds of the ignorant and feeble-minded. 

The English, you see, feared the thirty millions of American 
citizens of German blood, whose fathers had fought in all our 
country's wars. It was necessary for their plot to cow and 
discredit all Americans of German descent. 

For this, the National Security League was not enough, as 
the American (?) Peace and Arbitration League and the New 
York Peace Society had not been sufficient. There must be a 
monopoly on the part of the English bankers of Wall Street, of 
all *' patriotic" and "defense" movements, so that real Amer- 
icans should not have liberty of action in such organizations. 

Now we reach the culminating step in the plans of the Group 
of Seven men, whom we recall as having been seated on the front 
of the stage at that meeting in Carnegie Hall four years before. 

J. Pierpont Morgan had appointed himself the official war 
agent of England in this country. He had made contracts with 
all the munitions factories, so that all their output would be 
assured to the country that he loves better than his own. He had 
organized other great munitions factories, for the manufacture of 
shells and shrapnel while England's war should last. But he is 
a far-sighted man. When the war ends, he intends that these 
factories shall be sold to the United States government. To 
accomplish this purpose, the American public must be educated 
to the fact that "national defense" is a great and patriotic duty. 

The National Security League had asked an immediate appro- 
priation of $100,000,000 for the national defense. That was only 
a feeler to "educate the public." The sum must be made much 
higher. 

Colonel Robert M. Thompson, chairman of the board of 
directors of one of the war munitions companies, was selected as 
the stalking horse in this development. As a one-time graduate 
of Annapolis, he had organized a Navy League. This moribund 
society was now to be used in the furtherance of the Morgan plan. 
Colonel Thompson inaugurated a "defense" luncheon, and in- 
vited to it the members of the Group of Seven. Invitations were 



THE SHAM PEACE SOCIETIES 73 

extended by him to the heads of all the war munitions companies 
and the Wall Street bankers who do business with them. 

Among the gathering invited we note : — J. Pierpont Morgan, 
Thomas W. Lamont, George P. Baker, Frederic R. Coudert, Dr. 
Lyman Abbott, as also most of the other partners of Morgan, and 
his brother-in-law, Herbert L. Satterlee. 

At this meeting, Colonel Thompson proposed that the govern- 
ment immediately expend not $100,000,000, but $500,000,000 on 
armament. The method in educating the public was the same 
later adopted in the'machinations of this same group for a billion- 
dollar loan to the Allies. 

This $500,000,000 was to flow, of course, right back into the 
pockets of the men invited to Colonel Thompson's luncheon. 

STIFLING THE PUBLIC CONSCIENCE 

But these people had something else to fear, and that was 
that the conscience of the American people would be awakened, 
and they might have an embargo placed on the exportation of 
war material. That, of course, would be fatal to the Morgan 
group of munitions makers, who were expecting to make their 
millions out of a world catastrophe. But they cleverly executed 
their campaign for the stifling of the public conscience. College 
professors were hired to write articles, informing us that it 
would be "unneutral" to place an embargo on arms shipments. 
That weak nations would be unable to protect themselves against 
strong nations if we did so. That German militarism must be 
crushed. 

And they did not call attention, of course, to the fact that the 
"weak nations" to whom Morgan was supplying arms were the 
great empires of Russia and Great Britain, and that so far from 
suppressing militarism, the Morgans were trying to impose mili- 
tarism upon the country by the expenditure of a half billion 
on armament. 

In the meantime a movement was begun in Carnegie's New 
York Peace Society for an embargo on the shipment of arms. 
Morgan had provided means to oppose that. His men, Lyman 
Abbott and his counsel, the corporation lawyer, Francis Lynde 
Stetson, of the Steel Trust, and the Englishman, George Haven 
Putnam, hastily formed a committee and issued a statement 



74 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

September 6th, protesting against any interruption to the ship- 
ment of arms, since that might curtail the jDrofits of Morgan 
and the Steel Trust. Similarly, when John Wanamaker, in Phil- 
adelphia, advocated an embargo on arms, Morgan's men in the 
National Security League made him resign at once as chairman. 

When some women in Baltimore issued posters, calling on 
Americans to protest against, the arms shipments, Ochs, the 
Money Trust tool in New York, did not spare American woman- 
hood to serve his Wall Street masters. Absolutely, this man 
Ochs attacked American women, assailing them as doing a 
shameful thing in protesting against arms shipments, since that 
might curtail Morgan's profits. 

Corporation lawyers all flew to the rescue of Morgan profits, 
in which most of them always share. A Baltimore corporation 
lawyer, Charles Jerome Bonaparte, once an attorney general, in 
agitating for the National Security League, said at Carnegie 
Hall: — ''If I am asked what I mean by a reasonably possible 
enemy, I reply — any power except Great Britain." And more 
recently he wrote to the American Defense Society: — "1 am in 
cordial sympathy with prompt provision for the national defense. 
We have become involved in controversies with powerful nations. 
When the war shall end, those tuhom ive have offended may be 
victorious." 

I think a child could detect a false ring to these words. 
They brought something to my mind, and impelled me to look 
up Mr. Bonaparte in "Who's Who in America," where I found 
that he had given his lineage as follows : — ' ' Charles Jerome 
Bonaparte, grandson of Jerome Bonaparte, King of West- 
phalia." That's enough! 

I think that if we revert to that stormy Winter night in 1911, 
when our countrymen experienced misgivings that all was not 
well with the sham peace propaganda, and that it was in reality 
a movement to ally this country on the side of England in her 
coming war, we have found THAT THEIR FEARS WERE 
JUSTIFIED. 

WHO THEY ARE 

Let US analyze the affiliations of the seven men who sat on 
the stage in Carnegie Hall that memorable night. 

There was Andrew Carnegie, born in Great Britain, with a 



THE SHAM PEACE SOCIETIES 75 

home on Fifth Avenue, and one in Scotland; easting his vote 
in both countries; holder of $300,000,000— odd Steel Sinkers,— 
five per cent, bonds of the Steel Trust, which now earns its 
income from the manufacture and sale of shells and bayonets, 
used to arm Russian Cossacks and Senegal negroes for the 
destruction of a white race. 

Should an Englishman, so conscienceless as this, head an 
American peace society? 

There was Henry Clews, born in England ; for years a pro- 
British agitator; who derives his income from a score of little 
branch brokerage offices, where men speculate in war stocks on 
margin. One of the leading brokers in Wall Street told me one 
day that, at the end of the year, when he balanced his books, 
there was rarely a customer who had not lost his all in the stock 
market gamble. 

Is an Englishman such as this qualified to head an American 
peace society ? 

There was J. Pierpont Morgan, war agent of England, whose 
record in ' ' Who 's Who ' ' is given thus : — 

J. Pierpont Morgan — Homes : — Offices : — 

231 Madison Ave., N. Y. 23 Wall St., N. Y. 

12 Grosvenor Sq., London, W. 22 Old Broad St., London. 

Clubs: — White's, St. James Club and the City of London 
Club. 

Is this English banker qualified to lead an American peace 
or defense movement ? 

There was Thomas W. Lamont, the partner of Morgan, Eng- 
land 's war agent. 

There was George F. Baker, one of Wall Street's Big Four, 
and a leader of the Money Trust, investigated and censured by 
the Pujo Committee. 

There was Frederic R. Coudert, son of a French father and 
counsel for the French government, director of a company doing 
a business of billions with the war munitions concerns, and a 
bitter anti-German agitator. 

There was Dr. Lyman Abbott, of the Outlook, whose venom- 
ous pen has worn itself dull in the last shameful year in pro- 
British agitations. 

And now it is these men, the inflamers of public sentiment, 
who laughed at us when we opposed an arms embargo, who now 



76 WAR PLOTTERS OP WALL STREET 

tell us that ' ' we have offended ' ' powerful nations by the shipment 
of arms to their enemies. They instruct us we must arm in our 
own defense, and that the government must buy Morgan's war 
plants, and slip $500,000,000 into the pockets of this multi- 
millionaire. 

Why not let us ape England, and tax the munitions makers 
for the national defense? They are the only ones who have 
made money in this country during the year that is dead and 
gone. 

But these Englishmen new evidently fear the 120 millions of 
Germans in Central Europe, whom they "have offended" by 
their sale of arms to England. I would call to their attention 
that there are others nearer home whom they have cause to fear, 
— that is, the thirty millions of Americans of German blood, 
upon whom they have tried to heap infamy during the last 
twelve months. How do they purpose to defend themselves 
against these enemies? These thirty millions are now welded 
together as one, they think as one, and they are strong enough 
to bring to a stern accounting the English crew who, for the last 
year, have singled them out of the social body for attack. 

morgan's "peace" trust 

Is it not clearly proved that Morgan, years ago, took care to 
monopolize the sham "peace" movements and the "fake" de- 
fense movements? His father and his partners organized the 
"arbitration treaties" in favor of England. Morgan and his 
lawyers and creatures were instrumental in founding and con- 
trolling the New York Peace Society and the American Peace 
and Arbitration League, the Navy League and the National 
Security League. Morgan's hand has been in all this. He is 
the evil genius of his race. 

Is this disloyalty, or treason ? 

Morgan is restless and untiring to swing this country into 
England's maw. He is dogged and determined in his actions. 
Congress has a stern duty to perform. It must check this 
dangerous man. If Congress does not act, then the people will. 
It is dangerous to goad the people into action. 

Morgan's wrath is bitter in this hour of the miscarriage of 
his plans. He has been unable to force this country into war on 



THE SHAM PEACE SOCIETIES '^ 77 

England's side. His loan to the Allies was cut in half. What 
is he plotting now? 

When the people objected to Morgan 's billion-dollar loan, his 
organ, the Sun, came out and said : — 

' ' Should the loan be withheld, and the war thus cut short, 
to whose advantage would it be ? How much of Russia would 
Germany annex? What would become of Morocco? What 
would become of Egypt? What would Germany do to British 
commerce? What would Germany do to Britain's natural de- 
fense, her navy?" 

In this, Morgan at last unmasked himself. He has not been 
working for America. What do Americans care how much of 
Russia Germany annexes ? What do they care what becomes of 
British commerce, or whether she remains in Egypt, which she 
has stolen from the Turk ? What care have we to maintain the 
French in the filched country of Morocco ? 

But that is Morgan's will. He would have us fight for 
England and France — he would have us lend our billions to 
them for the purposes of their war, regardless of the conse- 
quences to our welfare. 

Is Morgan now seeking to precipitate a panic in this country? 

The thing is by no means improbable. 

Morgan's father is said to have doubled the family fortune in 
the panic days of 1907. He was enabled then to get the 
Tennessee Coal & Iron Co. for his Steel Trust without the 
expenditure of a dollar, and merely by the printing of a few 
bond certificates. 

When a Morgan railroad goes into receivership, Morgan 
makes a million dollars commission in reorganization. 

Wall Street does not fear panics. It thrives on the misfor- 
tunes of the people. 



VIII. 

RED LIGHTS AHEAD! 

"Red lights ahead!" In this picturesque railroad phrase, 
grown famous in financial annals, James J. Hill, then chairman 
of the Great Northern Railroad, predicted the oncoming panic 
of 1907. 

I was reminded of this prediction, made by Mr. Hill, a man 
whom I greatly admire, as I walked through Wall Street a few 
days ago. These panics, which the public fears so justly, come 
for some strange reason upon us every seven or eight years. 
Panics are not wholly man-made. They are often made unwit- 
tingly, through the madness of men. 

I remember the panic of '93, when I had just "struck" New 
York City from Ohio, a poor lad. And another one came later, 
in 1901, made solely by Wall Street gamblers. Six years later 
came the "rich man's panic." 

What reminded me of "Jim" Hill's fine phrase as I strolled 
through Wall Street this late September day ? There was much 
to contemplate. To the left hand, at the corner of Broad and 
Wall Streets, topping the new white structure of the House of 
English Morgan, a great steel screen had been placed above the 
court that opens on the glass roof covering the ground floor of 
his banking house. A cordon of armed detectives was stationed 
about his office doors. 

From the right hand there came to me the subdued uproar of 
shouting, shrieking voices — voices of maddened brokers on the 
guarded floor of the New York Stock Exchange, also still topped 
with a steel wire screen. And at the entrance of the Exchange, 
the greatest money market of our country, there still hung the 
sign "Gallery Closed for Repairs." Wall Street brokers still 
refuse the public admittance to the scene of their operations. 

And I felt downcast and depressed as I thought back on those 
long-gone years when I had come to this city, a poor boy from 
Ohio. How the days had changed ! Then there was public spirit 

78 



RED LIGHTS AHEAD! 79 

and free thought. Newspapers like the World and Sun would 
have had electrifying stories of the fear in which Morgan and 
his creatures dwelt, of the manner in which they had screened 
themselves from public vengeance. And our country would not 
have been unwarned. 

But to-day the word of a powerful English banker is sufficient 
to still the columns of newspapers, which in the past thought it 
their best endeavor to strive for the public good. 

"Red lights ahead!" Races become decadent through cor- 
ruption — yes, those races that we love the best. When we were 
boys we all read Plutarch, and loved him for the knowledge of 
human nature he displayed. You remember old Timon of 
Athens, and the words he spoke to Alcibiades, when he saw him 
driving his countrymen to madness ? "Go on, my brave boy, 
and prosper, for your prosperity will bring ruin on all this 
crowd I ' ' 

And I thought of Young Morgan and his English banking 
friends of Wall Street. Here are bankers, mad with race hatred, 
throwing all conservatism and caution to the winds. They try 
to fling away the public's billion, as though it were so much 
chaff. It is hard to earn a billion dollars. No man has ever 
done so. The slender savings of the people, always hard earned, 
are a mere bauble in the hands of thoughtless bankers. 

Read the columns of Ochs, the tool of the Money Trust, and 
he will blabbingly tell you of the "millionaires made by war 
stocks. ' ' 

Yes, there are men in Wall Street who have made millions in 
war stocks. They are making them by juggling the money of 
the people, which blind confidence and honest faith had entrusted 
to their care. Then comes the great Day of Reckoning — as it 
came in '93, in 1901, in 1907. And then who has won out? The 
men who do not care for panic days — the men of Wall Street. 
They will lean back and laugh at you then, glutted v/ith their 
millions, and you and I shall have to pay their bills. 

WARNING VOICES IGNORED 

"Red lights ahead !" Back in those days the voices of warn- 
ing were ignored. They were spoken by Hill and Jacob Schiff. 
But in 1906-07 there were the same conditions that prevail to-day. 



80 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

The mad market, the million-share days. The inflation, the banks 
loaning the people's money on mushroom stocks, while happy 
brokers laughed and made their coin. The same conditions 
prevail to-day — the clerks working overtime in the gambling 
houses of Wall Street, sleeping on improvised cots, working day 
and night, in the fever and furor, trying to keep track of the 
accounts of the poor dupes who are misled by the intoxicating 
songs of corrupt newspapers of "fortunes made in stocks." 

The Day of Reckoning is as sure as the tides and the floods 
and the setting of the moon. It is the world old story of human 
credulity, of human faith in the lying tongues of scheming men. 

''Red lights ahead!" It is now October, in the year 1915. 
Clip out this story and file it away for the future day — the great 
Day of Reckoning, when men must pay for the sins of others, 
when factories will close their gates, and the store and the ware- 
house will ring to empty footfalls. And far away, in Europe, 
perhaps, you may see the faces of mocking English bankers, the 
expatriates of the Money Trust, who have coined their swag and 
made their homes abroad, and who now laugh at their foolish 
dupes, whom they hoodwinked with false tales and lying profits, 
living lives of ea§e on stolen money. 

The Wall Street-owned newspapers, with their powerful and 
unscrupulous news syndicates, which ferret out the ignorant and 
unsuspecting in every hamlet in the land, are regaling the public 
to-day with their stories, "Wall Street is a street of gold," 
"millionaires are being made daily," "there are fortunes to be 
made in war stocks." 

Poor, foolish human frailty ! Will that day ever come when 
men will listen to those who wish them well? When the honest 
and unsuspecting will no longer heed the voices of plutocratic 
tempters ? 

' ' Wall Street is paved with gold ! " And the poor fellow, 
workless and worrying, who walks the streets, is tempted to take 
his money from the savings bank and put it in war stocks. 

If there are those who are willing to listen, let them pay heed 
to this. Do you know that only a week ago the Missouri, Kansas 
and Texas Railroad went into a receiver's hands? The Missouri 
Pacific is bankrupt. What has become of the Rock Island? 
Have you seen the dreadful loss in the earnings of the Union 
Pacific? 



RED LIGHTS AHEAD! 81 

Those are our great properties on. which our fortunes and our 
wealth depend. In those roads, the arteries of the business life 
of the country, the money of the savings banks is invested. Are 
they prospering ? No. 

Who prospers ? The munitions makers 1 Perhaps. But from 
what source do their profits come ? From France, from England, 
from Russia ? From countries devastated by the greatest war in 
history? No, England, Russia, France are not sending gold to 
our country to enrich the munitions makers. Those English 
bankers of "Wall Street have paid themselves for the debts the 
bankrupt countries of Europe owe by taking the millions of 
savings of the American people, which are deposited in savings 
banks, in life and fire insurance companies, and these men, who 
love foreigners better than their own countrymen, have placed in 
these companies the notes of their bankrupt friends, whom they 
toasted and flattered in New York at their Pilgrim dinners and 
their bankers' feasts, at which they drank the healths of King 
George of England, the Russian Czar, the King of Italy and the 
assassin rulers of Servia. 

But business is bad in the United States. We all know that. 

The Money Trust newspapers of Wall Street, drunk with the 
advertising profits that now fill their columns, do not tell you 
such facts as these. The Commercial mid Financial Chronicle, 
of September 2.5th, says : ' ' England has huge resources to draw 
upon, no matter what may happen, and she has never in her 
entire history undertaken to place one of her Government loans 
in a foreign country. Even if we take an extreme view of the 
case and contemplate the possibility of partial insolvency as the 
result of the putting out of huge additional masses of debt with 
the continuation of the war, it is inconceivable that this $500,- 
000,000 or $600,000,000 foreign loan will ever be in danger." 

THE bankrupt's TOLL 

This is the still and silent voice of a financial organ, which 
few will read. It does not say that England has had to pay the 
bankrupt's toll of six per cent, for her money bj^ placing a first 
mortgage on the Empire. It does not call attention to the fact 
that her premier security, Consols, is selling at a "minimum" 
price of 65. This minimum means that the British Government 



32 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

dares not let a free market, prevail in her chief security, that if 
the minimum price were removed, it would drop to a panic figure. 
The figure is easily calculated. Consols bear interest at 2|/2 per 
cent. The British loan forced upon the American people by the 
publicity campaign of the Morgan group pays 5 per cent., but 
sells at 96]/4. Then a security paying one-half that interest is 
worth only one-half the price — or 48^. That figure is the price 
of British Consols to-day — no, it is not the price, for the loan 
imposed upon America is a first mortgage upon the taxing power 
of the British Empire, and Consols take the rank of a second 
mortgage, and can be worth only 40 or thereabouts. 

I shall quote a warning issued at the Investment Bankers' 
Association of America, at Denver last week, which your Money 
Trust newspaper did not dare to print and which was uttered 
by Mr. A. B. Leach, the President of the Association, who said: 
"Gentlemen, I have presented three pictures, which perhaps 
have a somewhat gloomy atmosphere, three pictures which be- 
speak possible disaster even. 

"As investment bankers we face the problem that the capital, 
which has been expended for the development of this country, 
derived in the past from Europe, will not be available, 

"7 have heard it prophesied hy the very wise that at the end 
of the war we ivould face a financial catastrophe, that wreckage 
and repudiation tvould te ivorldivide." 

' ' The capital which has been expended for the development of 
this country, derived in the past from Europe, will not be avail- 
able," And at the siren voice of Morgan, the credulous Amer- 
ican people have been tempted to give of their own capital 
$500,000,000 to Prance, England and Russia, to the accompani- 
ment of the enthusiastic cheers of English bankers. 

And thus, while Wall Street bankers throw away one-half 
billion of the people's money, what is being done with the 
reserves of Wall Street banks? 

Let us see. 

In the chart that is given below, we can clearly see what 
game the conscienceless houses of Wall Street are perpetrating. 
In the last seven weeks, ended with October 2nd, in only twenty 
of the war stocks, and there are perhaps as many more, thirteen 
million five hundred and eleven thousand shares were traded in, 
and in this gamble, solely in these twenty stocks, remember, the 






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84 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

brokers, their victims and the bankers manipulated the immense 
sum of one billion three hundred and sixty-six million eight 
hundred and thirty-five thousand eight hundred and thirty-se /en 
dollars. 

What a dreadful situation here presents itself. On the one 
hand, the Morgan group helps itself to a half billion of the 
people's money, to repay itself for the munitions sold to the 
bankrupt Allies. On the other hand, great railroad systems go 
thundering down into bankruptcy, imperilling the resources of 
the country, while not a hand is raised to help them. And now 
the Wall Street bankers further use the funds of the public to 
lend one billion one hundred millions to the war stock gamblers 
on twenty inflated war stocks in seven weeks. 

These are termed "call" loans. They must be met and paid 
on demand. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN WALL STREET 
WHEN THE CALL LOANS ARE CALLED ? 

Two months ago The Fatherland called attention to the fact 
that the members of the Stock Exchange were working in guilty 
fear, hidden from the public eye. At that time the officials of 
the Exchange explained in the AVall Street organ, the Times, that 
the gallery was being "repaired," and that the steel screen had 
been placed above the building because of the fear of falling 
bricks. Must not Mr. Noble feel very silly to-day at his attempted 
deception of the public? Now, after the lapse of months, the 
gallery is still closed to the public, and the steel wire covering has 
been adopted across the way, on the roof of Morgan 's building. 

Mr. Noble and his friends, hiding and working in guilty fear, 
are too drunk with the war stock gamble to heed the kindly meant 
warning. They have since even added to their list other war 
stocks, and added to the financial danger. 

It is essential then that the public take heed of its savings 
and see that they are not secretly invested in guilty stocks and 
the blood-stained war bonds of the Money Trust. 

THE AACHEN & MUNICH FIRE INSURANCE CO. 

We have received the following letter from the Aachen & 
Munich Fire Insurance Company: 

"In the issue of The Fatherland, dated the 29th inst., an 
article appears in which the name of our company is quoted in 



RED LIGHTS AHEAD! 85 

a manner which might suggest to some readers that the Aachen 
& Munich Fire Insurance Company would buy the bonds of 
some of the countries involved in the European war. 

"In order that there may be no misunderstanding on this 
point we would greatly appreciate your mentioning the fact in 
your paper that the securities owned by this company in the 
United States consist exclusively of United States Government, 
State, Municipal and Railroad bonds, and any further invest- 
ment which may be made in the interest of the Aachen & 
Munich Fire Insurance Company will be limited to bonds of 
the same character. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) J. A. Kelsey, 

Manager. ' ' 

THE PENN MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 

Similarly The Fatherland receives the following communi- 
cation from the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company : 

"I notice in the issue of your paper of September 29th that 
you publish, on page 128, an inference that the Penn Mutual 
Life Insurance Company is connected with or will invest in the 
war loan securities about to be issued. I beg to state that this 
company carries no money in foreign securities. It is prohibited 
from owning them. Its life insurance business and its invest- 
ment field (all its operations) are confined to a territory within 
the borders of the United States. I think this will assure you 
and your readers that the funds of our company are carefully 
guarded. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) Geo. K. Johnson, 

President. ' ' 

It is a pleasure to The Fatherland to publish these frank 
letters. Undoubtedly the public will also appreciate the fact 
that the investments of the Aachen & Munich and the Penn 
Mutual Life are not to be risked in foreign loans. In the same 
article the names of other fire and life insurance companies were 
mentioned, whose directors or of^cials had attended the confer- 
ence at the Morgan Library in the interest of the Anglo-French 
war loan. And still even more significant was the fact that this 
private conference was attended by officers of great public 
savings banks, such as the Union Dime, the Greenwich Savings 
Bank and the Bowery Savings Bank. Such institutions are 



86 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

restricted hy law as to their investments, but many of them keep 
surplus funds on deposit in other banking institutions, which 
use them as they wish. The German Savings Bank came out 
the other day and announced that it would withdraw such 
deposits from other institutions unless it received assurances that 
such funds would not be used in the hazards of the Anglo-French 
loan of Morgan 's. 

This announcement was highly appreciated by the bank's 
depositors. Is it not of deep moment to the depositors in the 
Greenwich, the Bowery and the Union Dime to receive similar 
assurances that their money will not be employed contrary to 
law in hazardous loans? Failing to receive such assurances, it 
is to the interest of such depositors to place their savings in 
institutions like the German Savings Bank, which give promise 
of safety for their funds. Similarly, policy-holders of fire and 
life insurance companies should be heedful to deal only with 
companies such as the Aachen & Munich and the Penn Mutual 
Life that give similar assurance. 

BANKERS OP GERMAN BLOOD 

It has been a matter of extreme regret to persons who 
opposed the hazardous Morgan loan to the Allies, that in the 
announcement made by the Morgans, there should have been 
included as underwriters, certain banking houses, the members 
of which are of German origin, such as Heidelbach, Ickelheimer 
& Co., Hallgarten & Co., Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., and J. & 
AV. Seligman. Such bankers should have recalled the statement 
issued by Mr. Jacob H. Schitf, explaining why Kuhn, Loeb & Co. 
could not participate in the loan, namely, that assurances would 
not be given by the Morgans that the funds thus used would not 
be in part handed over to the Russians. Certainly, patriotic 
Americans would not share in such a loan in the interest of a 
race that perpetrated the pogroms of Kishinef and Gomel, and 
so outraged the feelings of this country that it ended its com- 
mercial treaty with the Romanoff brutes. How far more bitterly, 
then, must men of German blood feel toward the Russian race 
responsible for the foul crimes committed by barbarous Cossacks 
in East Prussia. 

But it was thought that there was still another reason why 



RED LIGHTS AHEAD! 87 

hankers of German origin tvoidd not share in the loan. Such 
bankers must remember that, about six short months ago, the 
English government announced officially that any Englishman 
would be found guilty of treason if he traded tvith a foreign 
hanking house that had a German partner. This was done to 
ruin German bankers. But the effect .was opposite. England 
found herself ruined, and had to come to the German bankers, 
hat in hand, begging them to lend her money at six per cent., 
giving as security a first mortgage on the British Empire. 
Bankers of German origin, who shared in the Morgan loan, 
must have shorter memories than other men of German blood. 



IX. 

THE ''AMERICAN" PILGRIMS 

On the night of September 30th, 1915, I saw, in a hotel on 
Fifth Avenue, a Memorial * that will yet thrill the world. I 
heard the story of the titled leaders of a race who had provoked 
a war, but found that their own people would not fight for them. 
So these men brought mercenary savages into a white man's 
country to wage a Ifarbarous warfare. 

But these titled men feared the condemnation of the world, 
so in order to forestall all censure, they selected from amongst 
them a man who bore a once honored name, and whose words 
might carry weight abroad. Upon him they urged an infamous 
task. He shuddered — but obeyed. He made charges f against 
the enemies of his race, so as to alienate from them the sympathy 
of the world. But when proofs of his infamy were produced, he 
concocted other charges,^ that the Memorial might not be be- 
lieved. 

The Memorial that I saw that night showed photographs of 
men staring into vacancy, with surgeons' stitches over sightless 
orbs. They were wounded men, whose eyes had teen cut out iy 
black savages, with special daggers with which their masters had 
provided them for this purpose, fastened in the sheath of their 
sidearms. 

There are some thoughts that cannot be uttered in words. 
I confess, I staggered from the room in that hotel, with a groan 
in my heart at the thought that a race of white men could be 
so vile. 

I descended the stairway, and as I passed along the carpeted 
hall, there was a faint burst of cheering as one of the side doors 
opened The sound affected me unpleasantly. I wondered that 
men could laugh. 



* Foreign Office, BerUn, July 30, 1915. Suppressed by newspapers in 
New York at request of WaU Street bankers, since it might awaken 
sympathy for the Germans, and thus frustrate the billion-dollar loan 
to the Allies. 

t Bryce — Belgian atrocity charges. 

t Bryce — Armenian atrocity charges. 



THE '^ AMERICAN" PILGRIMS 89 

At my questioning glance, an attendant who was passing, 
said: "It's a banquet, sir. One of the finest we've ever given. 
Would you like to see it ? " 

He opened the door through which the cheering had pene- 
trated, and mechanically I followed him. A cloud of hot, smoke- 
laden air met my face as I entered upon a mezzanine balcony. 
Below me four hundred men were seated at tables in a great 
apartment. 

The last course had been served. Pale-faced waiters were 
removing from stained table cloths the wax lights, sparkling 
beneath their pink silk shades.* Wine men, with service chains 
about their necks, were filling the glasses. 

At the guests' table an aged man arose, with a wine glass in 
his upraised hand. I recognized him as a corporation lawyer, 
whom I have met in Wall Street for many years. His lips 
opened, and he spoke. At his words I started back as though 
I had felt the crack of a whip in my face. 

For this Wall Street lawyer said : "I propose three cheers for 
the King of England." 

An outburst of cheering succeeded. Men grew mad. They 
pounded on the tables. Bottles and chairs were overthrown. 

The Wall Street lawyer motioned for silence. Again he began 
to speak : " I am an old bencher of the Middle Temple, London. 
You all know Lord Bryce, for no man ever lived in America 
who made, himself more honored. Some of us would have pre- 
ferred to have something more said in this war, something more 
done, a protest when the invasion of Belgium occurred. You 
have read his reports of the acts against those men, and you 
have read his recent appeal. Putting these two reports of his 
together, with the two nations whom he indicted, they are exactly 
alike. If you scratch one of them, you find the blood of the 
other underneath. There is no possibility of distinguishing them 
in character or conduct. Constantly, daily and nightly, I am 
sympathizing with the Allies." 

Another wild outburst of applause ensued. 

These words affected me strangely. I marveled that they 
had been uttered on American soil. For you see, on the floor 
above, I had just seen the dreadful indictment of the English 
race — that they had filled a lire in Europe, from the North Sea 
to the Swiss frontier, with Gurkhas, Sikhs, Sepoys, Tureos, 



90 AVAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Goums, Moroccans and Senegalese, who, under the eyes of the 
highest commanders of England, had committed atrocities which 
set at defiance all the usages of civilization and humanity. 

Leaning over the balcony railing, I eyed the speaker intently. 
I noticed that he had grow^n very old. There was a touch of 
senility about the lips of this bencher of the Middle Temple. 

Silence again ensued. Again the corporation lawyer spoke. 
This time his subject was the $500,000,000 loan that had just 
been made to the Allies by Morgan, in forcing the use of the 
public's money in the banks and insurance companies of the 
country, which are all under his control. 

The lawyer said: "Fourteen months the war has been waged, 
and I noiv hope that every man, ivoman and child of the United 
States who has got a hundred dollars will invest it in this loan, 
and, what's more, I hope that this is only the first instalment. 
It's a great thing for us to have the opportunity to keep, and I 
think that the people here are grateful for it. 

"Lord Reading is going back with $500,000,000 in his pocket. 
He has dealt splendidly with the American people." 

An uproar of mad enthusiasm succeeded, with wild cheers for 
England's King. 

But the words just uttered made me ponder. For this 
bencher of London's Middle Temple had once been, I knew, a 
man of high intelligence. I felt assured that he knew at least 
as many facts as I about the loan. That Russia had lost sixteen 
of her governments to the Germans, the most productive and 
profitable sections of her Empire, thus destroying the chief re- 
sources of her revenue. That she had defaulted on her vast 
obligations to France and England, threatening impending bank- 
ruptcy to both countries. That, since the end of August, the 
Bank of England's gold had shrunk $35,900,000, while there 
was a rapidly increasing expansion of paper war currency issued 
through her joint stock banks.* 

"Was it possible that a man of repute should urge the men, 
women and children of this country to imperil their hard-earned 
savings in a loan to bankrupt foreign nations? Morgan and his 
private banking friends, of course, did not wish to hold the 
bag for the $500,000,000 credit they had advanced to foreigners, 
and they were working to unload upon the public the bonds 



* New York Evening Post, October 7. 



THE ''AMERICAN" PILGRIMS 91 

whose flotation so far had been a failure. But could even a 
corporation lawyer of Wall Street thus urge ruin upon the 
people of the country in which he had made his fortune? 

Involuntarily there occurred to my mind the words of Presi- 
dent Wilson, when he issued his neutrality proclamation on 
August 6, 1914: "And I do further declare and proclaim that 
the statutes and treaties of the United States and the law of 
nations alike require that no person within the territory and 
jurisdiction of the United States, shall take part, directly or 
indirectly, in the said war, but shall remain at peace with all 
the said belligerents." 

And I asked myself. Who are these men, so strong that they 
may with impunity defy the power of the President of our 
country, and the wishes of its people ? I turned to the attendant 
on the mezzanine balcony and asked him : ' ' Who are these men 1 ' ' 

Owing to the din below, his lips came close to my ear. He 
whispered: "It's a society they call the American Pilgrims." 

Who are these Pilgrims ? I have since made a study of them. 
Their organization is one of immense power, and just now they 
seem to hold our country in the hollow of their hands. 

In the "Rules" of the handbook of the Society, which I 
obtained, I found the following given as the purposes of the 
•organization: "The object of the Society shall be the promotion 
of the sentiment of brotherhood among the nations. ' ' 

I shall now enumerate the members of this great Society. 
But before I do so, I wish to utter an appeal to my fellow- 
countrymen in the South, in the Middle West and in the West, 
where American principles and the belief in democracy still live. 
I wish to tell them that here in the East a powerful and unscru- 
pulous aristocratic plutocracy has seized upon the strength and 
resources of our nation. Great English bankers have been plot- 
ting here for years to seize the reins of government. So far, 
these men have succeeded. They control the banks of the coun- 
try, all the institutions in which the people have placed their 
savings; they at last control the press, and can sway public 
sentiment by means of their corrupt news services, from one end 
of the country to the other. They are determined to throw the 
financial resources of the United States into England's lap and 
to force this country into war on the side of that land they love 
better than the country of their professed adoption. 



92 . WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Whoso doubts my words, let him look upon this list. It is 
taken from the official handbook of the Society. 

THE SOCIETY OF PILGRIMS 

Sir Cecil Spring-Rice — Britain's Ambassador. 

J. Pierpont Morgan — Britain's war agent. 

Andrew Carnegie — British born; making his income from the 
Steel Trust's war contracts. 

Col. Robert M. Thompson — President of the Navy I'cague; 
indicted and fined for violating the Federal laws. 

Lord Murray, Master op Elibank — English Whip, who lost 
his party's funds by speculating in stocks. 

Henry P. Davison — Partner of Morgan, Britain's war agent. 

Thomas W. Lamont — Partner of Morgan, Britain's war agent. 

John Revelstoke Rathom — British born; editor of the Provi- 
dence Journal, mouthpiece of the British Ambassador. 

Adolph S. Ochs — Owner of New York Times; conducting Eng- 
lish propaganda. 

Ogden Mills Reid — President Tribune Association ; conducting 
English propaganda. 

George Gray AA^ard — Born in Hertfordshire, England. 

Bradley Martin — Educated at Oxford, England. 

James M. Beck 

John W. Griggs 

Joseph H. Choate 

Alton B. Parker 

Francis Lynde Stetson 

Frederic R. Coudert 

George T. Wilson — Vice-President Equitable Life Assurance 
Society. 

Pliny Fisk 

Francis L. Hine 

Albert H. Wiggin 

Frank A. Vanderlip 

Alvin W. Krech 

A. Barton Hepburn 



^Wall Street Corporation Lawyers 



•Underwriters of the $500,000,000 loan. 



Let us now analyze the acts of these sham Americans, and see 
how they have made sport during the last year of the American 
people. 



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93 



94 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Sir Cecil Spring- Rice certainly is a typical American Pilgrim. 
He has been plotting for the last fourteen months with his Eng- 
lish secret service men to discredit his fellow Ambassadors f^^om 
belligerent countries. And in this he has used Lansing as his 
little woolly lamb. 

We see that J. Pierpont Morgan, the English banker, founder 
and controller of the New York -Peace Society, the American 
Peace and Arbitration League, the Navy League and the Na- 
tional Security League, now also, with his partners, has full 
swing in the Society of the Pilgrims of the United States, Just 
as his two peace societies are shams, since they do not work for 
peace, and as his defense societies are shams, since they are 
working only to put $500,000,000 in his capacious pockets, so the 
Society of Pilgrims, ostensibly founded to ' ' promote brotherhood 
among the nations," is, as is plainly evident from the aged 
Choate's address, operating to promote hatred, if not war, 
between this country and the Central Powers of Europe. 

And what are we to think of the patriotism of Colonel Robert 
M. Thompson, President of the Navy League ? He demands that 
the Federal Government expend $500,000,000 on armament, so 
that the munitions plants of himself and his friends in Wall 
Street may prosper. Yet this man violated the laws of the 
Federal Government when he cornered cotton, in the endeavor 
to make this necessary commodity more expensive to every man, 
woman and child in this country. Will the Federal Government 
listen to this lawbreaker now? Do the members of the Navy 
League believe that he is a patriotic leader for them to follow? 

Then we come to English propagandists. It is an interesting 
subject. Here Ave find three American Pilgrims, one of whom is 
John Revelstoke Rathom, born in Britain, but who, like so many 
of his countrymen to-day, finds it safer to fight Germans on this 
side of the water than to go to the front. This man Rathom is 
the mouthpiece of the British Ambassador. What spies learned 
in their campaign of persecution against the British Ambas- 
sador's colleagues in Washington was featured as ''news" by 
this editor of the Providence Journal. In turn, Rathom deliv- 
ered his "news" to his two fellow Pilgrims, Adolph S. Ochs, of 
the New York Times, and Ogden Mills Reid, of the New York 
Tribune. And how these three "American" Pilgrims have had 
the laugh on the American public for the last fourteen months. 



THE "AMERICAN" PILGRIMS 95 

While they were prosecuting their English propaganda under 
the direction of Rathom, the English editor, their columns were 
filled with animadversions against the dreadful "German prop- 
aganda." They well might say, as I have heard they said: 
"Englishmen are so clever, you know, while the Americans are 
so very dull." 

We see among these Pilgrims, who cheered so frantically for 
the King of England and the $500,000,000 war loan, an alarming 
number of Wall Street corporation lawyers. Most of them have 
taken an active part in the English propaganda. Many of them 
are directly interested in the war munitions companies, and cor- 
porations associated with them. But what is still more alarming 
is that a great number of them are trustees of the great life 
insurance companies of the country. There is Mr. Choate, who, 
as we have seen, says that the $500,000,000 loan is only the "first 
instalment," and who gloats over the fact that Lord Reading is 
going back with $500,000,000 in his pocket. Yet this aged 
lawyer, who was educated at Oxford, is trustee of the Equitable 
Life Assurance Society. There is James M. Beck, who has made 
himself the apologist, if not the press agent, for England, trustee 
of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. There is Alton B. 
Parker, also trustee of the Equitable. And among those Pil- 
grims on that shameful night was even the vice-president of the 
Equitable Life, Mr. George T. Wilson. 

It is certainly a matter of great moment to Americans that 
men who avowedly would sacrifice the best interests of their 
country for a foreign land, should have control of those great 
corporations in which are invested the savings of the American 
people. There is no assurance or guaranty that the funds of 
those institutions are not being surreptitiously used in the 
hazardous loan to warring countries, M^hose credit has waned 
and who may repudiate their obligations. 

We find also among these Pilgrims a long list of bankers, the 
heads of financial institutions that are the underwriters of the 
loan. Since they applauded Choate, we must be led to believe 
that they also regard this loan as a " first instalment, ' ' and that 
they will try to force further use of the money of their depositors 
in advancing another billion to the Allies. 

A serious feature of the situation is the truculent attitude 
these bankers have suddenly assumed, under the tutelage of 



96 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Morgan, to those who are opposed to the loan. They bitterly 
term such persons who disagree with their views, "hyphens," 
" German- Americans, " "Teutons." In their blind worship of 
England, they do not hesitate to strike at their own countrymen. 
I shall instance some of the recent actions of these bankers in 
New York City. One bank president, when questioned by his 
depositors whether he was using their funds for the purposes of 
the loan, angrily instructed them to remove their accounts from 
his bank. Another incident I shall quote bodily from the Times 
of October 7th : 

"One instance was reported in which the committee of 100 
called on a large savings bank to serve notice that if that bank 
deposited any part of its funds in institutions helping in the 
flotation of the loan, all German- American depositors would be 
asked to close out their accounts. The President of the savings 
bank said that it was true that he had funds in some of the 
State and national banks known to be in sympathy with the 
loan. ' Also, ' he is reported to have told the committee, ' we hold 
mortgages on about 5,000 homes of German-Americans, and if 
you want to make a test of the matter, we shall begin insisting 
on the payment of all of these mortgages as they come due. ' ' ' 

Here we see an English banker deliberately coercing his 
depositors into the commission of an unneutral act, and threat- 
ening them, if they disobey him, with foreclosing the mortgages 
on their homes. This is undeniably the most scandalous story 
ever recorded in the banking history of New York State. This 
man says to his depositors : " I shall use your money as I see 
fit. If you dare to object I shall drive you from your homes." 
And this he said in spite of the warning of the Pujo Committee, 
that bankers and financiers must not use the money of public 
institutions in their operations as though it were their own. 

Further comment is needless. Does not this prove clearly 
how we have become subjects of a pro-British group of pluto- 
crats, who sneer at the wishes of the public, and force it to do 
their wdll ? 

The end is not yet to the shameful history of the Allies ' loan. 
To date the immense flotation has been a failure, in spite of 
heavy advertising, the puffing of Wall Street newspapers and the 
great campaign of publicity inaugurated by Morgan, who is 
desperately anxious to unload upon the people the bonds which 



THE ''AMERICAN" PILGRIMS 97 

he and his private bankers underwrote. False stories of "vic- 
tories" for the Allies were brazenly published in order to hurry 
the completion of the loan. But consternation struck the bank- 
ing group when the news came that Bulgaria had joined the 
Central Powers. The collapse of Russia has evidently swung the 
Balkan states into line with Germany. Is it the beginning of 
the end? 

This episode, however, was fatal for Morgan. He betrayed 
the frightened state of his feelings on October 8th, when he 
hastily summoned eight hundred bond salesmen from Boston, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. He gathered these men 
in the "Waldorf-Astoria, and in a personal appeal, he besought 
them to make a determined campaign in hawking the bonds 
among their acquaintances, to unload ' them as quickly as pos- 
sible. And Morgan even told them what arguments to use, in 
convincing the American people that England and France would 
not dare to repudiate the obligations, since, to use his own 
words: "They may need to come to us again." 

I think that enough has been shown here to demonstrate the 
great peril to our country of this sinister organization, the 
Pilgrims of the United States. And again I address myself to 
my fellow-countrymen in the South, the Middle "West and the 
"West to caution them and to warn them of the dreadful con- 
sequences that will undoubtedly ensue if this English banking 
group of "Wall Street, under the guidance of its unscrupulous 
corporation lawyers, is permitted to continue in power. Their 
co-ordinated operations are of so menacing a character, their 
combined power is so vast, their control of public funds so 
immeasurable, that if we do not combine against this association 
of foreigners, a catastrophe will certainly come upon our country 
that has no parallel in history. 



X. 

THE MEN WHO TOASTED THE CZAR. 

A few weeks ago I was a guest in one of the leading clubs of 
Philadelphia. We sat at a table in the grill ro.om. One of my 
friends related a shameful story. It was the life story of a man 
who had won a nation-wide reputation as a philanthropist. He 
was the reputed owner of a great newspaper, through which his 
beneficences flowed. One day a will was probated in Philadel- 
phia, and it was then revealed that the man who had been 
regarded throughout the country as a generous benefactor had 
been merely the tool of a powerful banker, who had used him, 
under the guise of philanthropy to work his own ends. When 
this will was probated, the revelations broke the heart of the 
philanthropist, and he died. 

The philanthropist I mention was George W. Childs. The 
banking family bears the name of Drexel. 

I left the club that night and walked down Broad Street. 
The blood had surged to my face, and my ears were ringing. I 
had said nothing w^hen I heard that story, but alone, with only 
the black night and the deserted street between me and my 
thoughts, I knew how that tale had burned into my heart. For, 
you see, I was born in Philadelphia. A man loves the place 
where he was born and I had just listened to my native city's 
shame. 

And the name of Drexel had recalled so very much to my 
mind. In 1904, when I first went to Wall Street, that name was 
cut in marble over the door of a great banking house at the 
corner of Wall and Broad Streets, "J. P. Morgan & Company, 
in the Drexel Building." Young Morgan has built a new house, 
and the name of Drexel has vanished. But sons of the Drexel 
family are fighting at the front in France with Turcos and 
Senegal negroes, to' wipe out the race from which their father 
sprang, for Drexel was of German blood. 

And I could not help exclaiming: ''There is infamy in every- 
thing connected with the name of Morgan." For Drexel had 

98 



THE MEN WHO TOASTED THE CZAR 99 

been the Elder Morgan's partner. When his puppet, Childs, 
died, A MASK HAD DROPPED, AND HIS COUNTRYMEN 
KNEW HIM FOR WHAT HE WAS. 



THE BANQUET OF THE BANKERS 

An extraordinary scene occurred in the banquet room of the 
Hotel Knickerbocker on the afternoon of October 1st, 1915. Two 
hundred men assembled there at a luncheon given to the foreign 
bankers who had come to this country at the invitation of J. P. 
Morgan, England's war agent, to receive the $500,000,000 credit 
for the war munitions sent to England, France and Russia, which 
those countries found themselves unable to pay. 

At this dejeuner, a toastmaster arose. His name is William 
D. Guthrie. He is a Wall Street corporation lawyer, whom I 
have known for many years. In Who's Who, Mr. Guthrie has 
given this information about himself: ''Educated in Paris and 
England." And at the dejeuner, speaking in the French tongue, 
this Wall Street corporation lawyer made this remarkable state- 
ment, to which I wish to call the attention of every American 
citizen : 

(Reported from the New York Sun of October 2nd, the organ 
of J. Pierpont Morgan.) 

(Words of William D. Guthrie) : 

''That country (France), according to reliable historians, 
having expended in behalf of the American colonies, between 
1776 and 1781, the great sum of $772,000,000, for which she 
afterward refused payment, it was time now for the United 
States to create a credit for the French Republic to a similar 
amount to be repaid when France can do so. ' ' 

"These words of the speaker, the climax of an impassioned 
address, aroused every man present and profoundly affected M. 
Octave Homberg and M. Ernst Mallett, the French commis- 
sioners." (Still quoted from Morgan's Sun.) 

The two French commissioners were impressed. AND NO 
WONDER. 

What shocking debtors we Americans are ! And we never 
suspected until Guthrie (educated in Paris and England), in- 
formed us that we owed Frenchmen the sum of $772,000,000. 

Now you know I had always had a much different impression 




100 



THE MEN WHO TOASTED THE CZAR 101 

oi' our obligations to France, but that is probably due to the 
fact that I was not "educated in Paris and England," and 
merely went to the little country school in northern Kentucky, 
where I received my primal education. I recall quite plainly 
our little country school ma'am apprising us of the fact that, 
during the French and Indian War, the French race in this 
country incited the savage Indian tribes upon us and with their 
aid, massacred the white inhabitants of North America. This 
is a national trait of the French race, which may be recognized 
to this day, for, instead of fighting their own battles in their 
native land, they have imported thousands of African Turcos 
and Senegal negroes to defend their land against the Germans. 

THE TWO HEROES 

Furthermore, I have walked up Riverside Drive, in New 
York, and seen the bronze statues erected there to the heroes of 
the American race, who have fought for and saved the integrity 
of the country. And there, in vain I looked for tributes to 
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Russians, Italians, Servians, Belgians. 
No, I could see only two bronze statues erected to two men who 
fought for their country in the Civil War, and shame to tell it, 
BOTH OF THEM WERE GERMANS— GENERAL CARL 
S.CHURZ AND GENERAL FRANZ SIGEL. 

Nevertheless, the Wall Street corporation lawyer asked his 
audience to arise and drink to his toast : ' ' The King of England, 
the King of Belgium (betrayed by the English), the President of 
France (whom the English have failed to help), the King of 
Italy (who betrayed his Allies, and now betrays the English), 
and the RUSSIAN CZAR." 

Yes, incredible as it may seem to us Americans, Guthrie 
toasted the Russian Czar. And the New York Sun records the 
fact that, by the men present, the toast was "enthusiastically 
drunk. ' ' 

THE MEN WHO TOASTED THE RUSSIAN CZAR 

The same newspaper recorded the men who were conspicuous 
by their presence at the dejeuner, and who toasted the Russian 
Czar : 

Henry Clews — Born in England, President of the American 
Peace and Arbitration League. 



102 WAR PLOTTERS OP WALL STREET 

Robert A. C. Smith — Chairman of the hoard of directors of 
the White Rock Mineral Water Company. Director of the 
Holmes Electric Protection Company. 

Robert Underwood Johnson — Vice-President of the INew 
York Peace Society, of which Andrew Carnegie is President. 

John Harsen Rhoades — Trustee of tho Greeyiivich Savings 
Bank. 

Robert Bacon — Director of the Steel Trust. Trustee of the 
Bank for Savings. Former member J. P. Morgan & Co. Once 
Ambassador to France. 

Thomas W. Lamont — Partner of J. P. Morgan, England's 
war agent. 

Bradley Martin — Educated at Oxford, England. Director 
Metropolitan Trust Company, Director Security Bank, New 
York. 

Lewis L. Clarke — Secretary of Morgan's Navy League. 
Director of the American Locomotive Company. 

Alton B. Parker — Director of the Equitable Life Assurance 
Society. Wall Street corporation lawyer. Vice-President of 
Morgan's National Security League. 

Paul Fuller — Member of the firm of Coudert Brothers, 
counsel for the French government. 

Ogden Mills Reid — President New York Tribune Associa- 
tion. 

Frank A. Vanderlip — President National City Bank. Di- 
rector of the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company. 

Elbert H. Gary— Chairman of the Steel Trust. 

Michel Oustinow^ — A subject of the Czar's. 

Takashi N akamuda — America 's yellow friend ( ? ) . 

William D. Guthrie^— Educated in Paris and England. 
Wall Street corporation lawyer. 

As in the case of the stalking horse of Drexel, Morgan's 
partner, THE MASK HAS DROPPED, AND OUR COUN- 
TRYMEN KNOW THEM FOR AA^AT THEY ARE. 

Yes, these are the men who toasted the Czar ! To me it seems 
a dreadful thing to toast the Czar, and yet I am not a Russian 
Pole. Poor Polish race, poor Polish Jews, victims of the pogroms 
of Kishinef and Gomel. The Russian Czar, the Romanoff, sprung 
from the loins of a fanatic priest, now the mental slave to an 
ignorant peasant pope. Is it possible for a citizen of our great 



THE MEN WHO TOASTED THE CZAR 103 

Republic to drink health and success to the man whose Cossacks 
lash their whips on the backs of Russia's Slavic workmen? 

No ! For it is we, the Americans, who abrogated our com- 
mercial treaty with the Romanoffs because they would not respect 
the passports of American citizens, because we could bear no 
longer the recital of the outrages of the Black Hundreds. 

So what do those hundreds of thousands of Slavic workmen, 
the Poles, the Polish Jews, who have become our citizens, think 
of these men who TOASTED THE RUSSIAN CZAR? What 
do the Americans who worked for the abrogation of the treaty 
with Russia think of the men who TOASTED THE RUSSIAN 
CZAR ? AVliat does the man with human sympathy and human 
love think of the men who TOASTED THE RUSSIAN CZAR? 

What do the thirty millions in this country, sprung from 
German blood, think of the men who TOASTED THE RUSSIAN 
CZAR ? To- these I shall merely give a hint of the dreadful story 
that shall yet break upon the world,* of the dreadful deeds 
performed by England 's ally in East Prussia, of the massacre at 
Santoppen, where twenty-one innocent men and women were 
dragged from church and shot by brutal Cossacks ; of the women 
burned to death in the village of Dembenofen, of the outrages in 
Ortelburg and Bischof stein ! 

THE CASE OP HENRY CLEWS 

The list is headed by Mr. Henry Clews. I once had a differ- 
ent idea of this man, whom I have known for many years. Yet, 
•as I have investigated and followed the machinations of this 
English stock broker of Wall Street, I am amazed that he has 
been permitted freely and without public censure, for so many 
years to pursue his disloyal English propaganda. Clews, born 
in England, is in evidence, as we have seen, everywhere where 
disloyalty thrives. We have seen him years ago in Carnegie 
Hall, trying to force upon the American people an arbitration 
treaty favoring England and aimed at Germany. We see him 
made President of the American Peace and Arbitration League, 
backed by the Morgan group in England's interest. We see him 
at public dinners, toasting England's king and EVEN THE 



* Report of Russian atrocities suppressed by the Money Trust news- 
papers of New York, and their syndicate services, for fear lest it might 
awaken sympathy for Germany and defeat the loan for the Allies. 



104 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

RUSSIAN CZAR, SINCE THROUGH THE ATROCITIES OF 
RUSSIA'S CZAR, ENGLAND HOPED TO WIN. 

Clews, naturalized as an American, I hope, has nevertheless 
worked for years in the interest of the country of his birth. 

Mr. Henry Clews, it was at you, and Englishmen like you, 
that President Wilson aimed his words, when, on October 11th, 
he said, at a public gathering: 

"Every political action, every social action, should have for 
its object in America at this time to challenge the spirit of 
America ; to ask that every man and woman who thinks first of 
America should rally to the standards of our life. There have 
been some among us who have not thought first of America, who 
have thought to use the might of America in some matter not of 
America's originative. I would not be afraid upon the test of 
'America first' to take a census of all the foreign-born citizens 
of the United States. I am in a hurry to have an opportunity 
to have a line-up and let the men who are thinking first of other 
countries stand on one side — Biblically, it should be the left — 
and all those that are for America, first, last, and all the time, 
on the other side." 

Mr. Clews, ponder well these words of our President, of the 
head of the nation of which you have become an adopted citizen, 
and to which you have sworn loyalty. I warn you in all serious- 
ness and in the best of good will, to cease at once your English 
propaganda, which you and your fellows have been inciting for 
so many years. The days of immunity have passed, and the day 
of reprisal is in the dawn. 

Let us stop to think for a moment. Nearly every newspaper 
and magazine in this country has been wrong in all its predic- 
tions of the European war for the last fourteen months. We 
Americans have let England steal our brains. 

Great events are impending. A tremendous empire has gone 
thundering down into the abyss of its own making. Another 
empire is crumbling to pieces and stands with outstretched 
hands, pleading for help from the races it has wronged. A 
sham republic is buried under the debacle of its shame. An 
embryo kingdom has died in still birth. 

Let us gird up our loins to meet the new day. Our thoughts 
are all to be changed, our ideas to be reversed. In the next 
hundred years the world shall advance more than in the last two 
thousand. 



XI. 

WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? 

Wall Street Again Defies the Law in Gambling With the 
Savings of the American People. 

The Law _^3___— ^....^^^ Insurance Law of New York. 

in L_-^^^ Chapter 28 of the Consolidated Laws, 

the Case Paragraph 36, Page 50. 

officers and trustees not to be pecuniarily interested in 

transactions 

No director or officer of an insurance corporation doing busi- 
ness in this State shall receive any money or valuable thing for 
negotiating, procuring, recommending or aiding in any purchase 
by or sale of such corporation of any property, or any loan from 
such corporation, nor be pecuniarily interested, either as princi- 
pal, co-principal, agent or beneficiary, in any such purchase, sale 
or loan. . . . Any person violating any provision of this sec- 
tion shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. 

Is it possible that the same group of Wall Street bankers and 
banking institutions, who were exposed by the Armstrong Com- 
mittee in 1905, and by the Pujo Committee in 1913, are again 
fastening their greedy hands on the savings w^hich the people of 
this country have deposited in the great life insurance com- 
panies ? 

Yes, it is true. Like birds of prey they still gather about the 
hoarded savings of the people. Restrictive laws cannot drive 
them away. State and Congressional investigating committees 
meet every few years to devise means to safeguard the people's 
money. But the plotters of Wall Street laugh at such laws. 
Their corporation lawyers show them the ways to evade all man- 
made enactments. The Money Trust must juggle with the pub- 
lic's hoard. Without it, it is powerless; with it it is the sinister 

105 



106 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

organization of conspirators that holds government and people 
under its ruthless thumb. 

As this is read by the jjolicyholders of the great life com- 
panies, I warn them that, if they value the future and happiness 
of their wives and children, they must write to their respective 
congressmen, calling attention to the conditions that are here ex- 
posed, and urging the immediate punishment of those men who 
have betrayed the confidence of the public and defied its laws. 

For again Wall Street is gambling with the public savings, 
and on a scale hitherto unprecedented, FOR IT IS USING 
THE LIFE INSURANCE MONEY IN DISPOSING OF THE 
$500,000,000 BONDS WHICH IT HAS FAILED TO UNLOAD 
ON THE PUBLIC. 

These bonds are unsafe as insurance investments. They are 
issued by the countries of France and England and pay five per 
cent. Yet' in the open market of Wall Street yesterday (Octo- 
ber 23rd) these securities sold as- low as 97^. What high-class 
American railroad bond sells so far below par when paying five 
per cent. ? 

Five per cent, bonds of the St. Paul are selling at 104^, 
while the first mortgage fives of England and France are below 
par. 

And the dangerous Anglo-French bonds are selling in Wall 
Street at this ridiculously low price, while at this very moment 
1,000 bond salesmen, personally hired by J. P. Morgan in the 
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, are going through the country trying to 
unload them at 98. Wall Street bond houses and banks have al- 
ready sent out more than 1,000,000 circulars, unduly fiattering 
the bonds, and it is estimated that more than $500,000 has al- 
ready been spent in full-page newspaper advertisements for the 
same purpose, and to prevent the newspapers from exposing this 
tremendous game. 

Even corporation lawyers and the officials of great life in- 
surance companies have boomed the bonds at public banquets in 
New York. Joseph H. Choate, trustee of the Equitable Life, at 
the recent Pilgrims' dinner given to the foreign bankers at 
Sherry's, besought every man, woman and child in the country to 
invest at least $100 in these bonds, and said they represented only 
a ''first instalment" of further billions yet to be loaned to Eng- 
land. 



WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? 107 

Letters were addressed to the heads of the leading life insur- 
ance companies of the country, requesting information whether 
they had invested their policyholders ' savings in these bonds, and 
desiring to know how many millions of such savings were in the 
hands of the Morgan banks of Wall Street, that are the syndi- 
cate underwriters to the loan, and are now holding the $500,000,- 
000 bonds secured, not by their own money, but by the public's 
savings. 

We publish in this story the replies of these life insurance 
presidents BY THEIR AYORDS SHALL YE KNOW THEM. 

x\t this point I wish to recall to public memory that, on the 
night cf September 11, 1915, a secret call was issued by. J. Pier- 
pont Morgan to the heads, officers and trustees of the life insur- 
ance companies to assemble in his private museum, the Morgan 
Library, situated in the rear of his home on Murray Hill, to meet 
the foreign banking delegation sent here by England and France 
to execute a loan of at least a billion dollars for those two warring 
nations. 

How many life insurance officials were present in response to 
Morgan 's call ? I cannot tell you, for the list of names has been 
kept secret. But I can tell you that the following men were there 
that night : Charles A. Peabody, president of the Mutual Life 
Insurance Company; George F. Baker, trustee of the Mutual 
Life ; William A. Nash and Francis L. Hine, directors of the 
Home Life Insurance Company ; John R. Hegeman, president of 
the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company ; Otto T. Bannard and 
Albert H. Wiggin, trustees of the Metropolitan Life, and Lewis 
Cass Ledyard, one of the three trustees of the Equitable Life. 

What were these men, the custodians of the people's savings, 
doing in the library of Morgan that night ? Had they forgotten 
that the Armstrong Committee in New York, and the Pujo Com- 
mittee of Congress, only a few years before, devised laws to 
prevent the banks and trust companies controlled by the Morgan 
group from handling the life insurance funds? 

I shall quote now the response from Mr. Charles A, Peabody 
to the question of how many millions of his policyholders' savings 
he has invested in the Anglo-French bonds, and how many mil- 
lions of such funds are on deposit and in the hands of the mem- 
bers of the Morgan loan syndicate. The Mutual, remember, is 
not a proprietary company. It is the absolute property of the 



108 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

policyholders, of whom Mr. Peabody is merely the representative. 
Read carefully his words : 

President's Office 

The Mutual Life Insurance Company op New York 
Nassau, Cedar, Liberty and William Streets 

New York, October 19, 1915. 
Dear Sir : 

Your letter in relation to this company's investing funds in 
the Anglo-French loan has been duly received. 

I beg to say in reply that the company has purchased $3,000,- 
000, par value, of the bonds in question. We regard them as a 
sound investment and as paying an exceptionally high rate of 
interest under present conditions. The law and the duties of the 
trustees of the company require that its investments should be 
made in their best judgment and in the interests of the whole 
body of the policyholders. We have policyholders of many na- 
tions and races and in due proportion to their holdings of our 
obligations they are entitled to our best judgment from the point 
of view of security and interest rates. The interests of any one 
policyholder, or of any group of policyholders, cannot properly 
be used to influence the company in its judgment as to invest- 
ments, either in favor of or against, a particular form of in- 
vestment, but the interests of the whole body must be duly 
considered by the company. 

It is proper that I should say in connection with the bonds 
to which you refer that this company on December 31, 1914 (that 
being the date of our latest annual statement) held among its 
investments Government Bonds of Austria and Germany to the 
amount of $5,776,000 ; it also held a real estate mortgage in the 
City of Berlin amounting to $150,000. These two amounts, 
together with other investments, constituted the reserves against 
outstanding policies on the lives of Austrian and German citizens, 
which at that time amounted to about $21,000,000. All of these 
investments were deposited with the Governments of Austria and 
Germany for the protection of their policyholders. In England 
and France we had at the same time outstanding policies on 
the lives of English and French citizens amounting to about 
$95,000,000, the reserves on which, held by us, amounted to 
about $37,500,000. Of this amount we held English Government 
Bonds of the par value of $150,861, and of French Government 
Bonds we held none ; so it would appear that the Austrian and 
German policyholders have already on deposit in their countries 
the funds which they have contributed to our general assets, 
while we hold about $37,500,000 contributed by the English and 



WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? 109 

French policyholders over and above any investments in the 
securities of their respective nations. I mention this particular 
phase of the case simply to make clear that there might be a 
considerable investment made in the Anglo-French Bonds, with- 
out there being any undue investment of the company's funds in 
such securities. 

Yours very truly, 
(Signed) Charles A. Peabody, 

President. 

I call upon Mr. Charles A. Peabody to resign, and at once, 
his presidency and trusteeship of the Mutual Life Insurance 
Company, on the grounds that he is no longer conducting the 
company in the interests of its policyholders. 

This letter of Mr. Peabody has evasion, disingenuousness and 
insincerity in every line. We all know there is no question here 
of the investments made by the Mutual in England, France, Ger- 
many and Austria on behalf of its branches there, in compliance 
with the respective laws of those countries. The question here is 
raised by American policyholders as to investments in the war 
bonds of France and England, made in this country, and pur- 
chased from a Morgan bank. The $3,000,000 investment in 
Anglo-French bonds has no relevancy with the compulsory in- 
vestments made by the foreign branches, Mr. Peabody knows 
this as well as I. 

Mr. Peabody states : ' ' We regard them as a sound investment 
and as paying an exceptionally high rate of interest. ' ' They do 
pay "an exceptionally high rate of interest" for government 
bonds, and they are selling at an exceptionally low price, which 
fact alone shows that they are not a ' ' sound investment. ' ' 

I would ask Mr. Peabody if he is cognizant of the statement 
made by Sir George Paish, on October 14th, in London, the 
highest financial authority of the British Empire : ' ' England is 
carrying the financial burden of the war. If we go on spending 
our money as we are now, we shall see another break in American 
Exchange. This prohahly would mean the suspension of specie 
payments, and ive should have to tell the world we luere unahle 
to pay our debts." 

Another break in sterling exchange has already begun. Will 
England suspend specie payments? Shall she soon tell the 
world she is unable to pay her debts? Is this $3,000,000 in 



110 WAR PLOTTERS OF AVALL STREET 

Anglo-French bonds then a "sound investment"? Is Mr. Pea- 
body a better judge of this investment than Sir George Paish? 

I would say to Mr. Peabody : You, sir, are a director of the 
following Wall Street financial institutions that are members of 
the Morgan syndicate in the $500,000,000 Anglo-French war 
bonds : 

Farmers' Loan & Trust Company. 

Guaranty Trust Company. 

National Bank of Commerce. 

These institutions pay great dividends to their director- 
stockholders in profits derived from their syndicate operations. 
I would ask Mr. Peabody whether it was in his capacity as 
director in these banks of the Morgan syndicate that he bought 
the $3,000,000 bonds for the Mutual Life, of which he is Presi- 
dent and trustee 1 In that case, I wish to call to his attention the 
Insurance Law printed at the head of this story : 

Chapter 28, Par. 36. — "No director or officer of an insurance 
corporation . . . shall be pecuniarily interested, either as 
principal, co-principal, agent or beneficiary, in any such sale 
or loan." 

If this is not a violation of the law, it surely is an evasion of 
the intents and purposes of the law enacted in 1906 by the Legis- 
lature of New York. 

The Morgan syndicate buys its Anglo-French bonds for 96 
and sells them to the insurance companies at 98. It makes a huge 
profit. Before the Law of 1906 was enacted, the Mutual could 
have been a member of the syndicate and have obtained its bonds 
at 96. But Paragraph 100 of the new Law prevents the Mutual 
from syndicate particip'ations. Therefore, the law, instead of 
having benefited the policyholders of the Mutual, merely serves 
the purpose of giving greater profits to the banking group of 
Wall Street. 

Mr. Peabody, to ivliom did the two per cent, profit go when 
the Mutual bought those $3,000,000 bonds f To the banks of the 
Morgan syndicate? 

Referring back to Mr. Peabody 's letter, we see that at the 
request of one of the Mutual policyholders, who is clearly entitled 
to learn what Mr. Peabody is doing with the policyholders' 
money, the President ABSOLUTELY IGNORES THE MAIN 
QUERY— HOW MANY MILLIONS HAVE YOU PLACED 



WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? Ill 

ON DEPOSIT WITH THE BANKS THAT ARE MEMBERS 
OF THE MORGAN SYNDICATE f 

Why does Mr. Peabody refuse to answer this question? On 
September 15, 1905, officials of the Mutual Life testified before 
the Armstrong Committee that the Mutual kept on deposit for 
two years with the National Bank of Commerce the enormous 
sum of $7,000,000, and kept still more millions on deposit with 
the First National Bank, Merchants' Exchange National Bank, 
Guaranty Trust Company, United States Mortgage & Trust Com- 
pany, Central Trust Company, and Bank of Montreal. 

The policyholders of the Mutual Life are entitled to know 
how much of their money is in the hands of the directors of those 
companies which are members of the Morgan syndicate, and 
being used for the purposes of the Morgan gamble in the war 
bonds. This question shall be answered, sooner or later. The 
money of life insurance companies cannot be imperilled in the 
hazardous syndicate speculations of the Morgan group. 

These same questions I must address to George F. Baker, 
Mutual Life trustee, and director of the First National Bank, 
Farmers' Loan & Trust, Guaranty Trust — all members of the 
Morgan war loan syndicate. 

I address them to Charles S. Brown, Mutual Life trustee, also 
director of United States Mortgage & Trust Company — member 
of the Morgan war loan syndicate. 

I address them to Edwin S. Marston, Mutual Life trustee, 
President of the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company — member of 
the Morgan war loan syndicate. 

To all those policyholders of the Mutual Life Insurance Com- 
pany who have written to me from every section of this country, 
wishing to know the facts which have been just disclosed, I give 
this advice : 

Write to the Board of Trustees of the Mutual Life demand- 
ing— 

The resignation, of Charles A. Peabody, 

The withdrawal immediately of every dollar of their money 
which has been placed on deposit in the banks and trust com- 
panies of the Morgan syndicate for use in the $500,000,000 war 
loan gamble. 

The return to the Morgan syndicate of the $3,000,000 bonds 
purchased. Any reputable bond house is at all times willing to 



112 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

take back from the purchaser the bonds it has sold, and at the 
price at which it sold them. 

If these demands are refused, I shall further advise the policy- 
holders as to their action in regard to the Mutual, for the law 
protects their interests in the company. 



THE CASE OP THE EQUITABLE LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY 

Statement sent to the managerial staff of the Society by Mr. 
John B. Lunger, First Vice-President: 

"Many of our policyholders Imve made inquiry whether we 
have participated in any of the loans put out by the countries 
now at war in Europe ; and doubtless similar inquiries have been 
made to you. 

"No matter how safe as an investment or remunerative such 
loans may be we feel that an institution engaged in the conserva- 
tion of human life ought to confine its investments to the ordinary 
character, and therefore we have not participated in any Euro- 
pean loans offered in this country since the beginning of the 
war," 

It is a matter of satisfaction to the Equitable policyholders 
to learn that the Society will buy none of the war bonds. But 
it is lamentable, indeed, that no statement is forthcoming from 
the Equitable officials in response to the inquiries as to the 
amounts of the surplus funds of the Society that may be on 
deposit with the banks and trust companies of Wall Street, 
Morgan's syndicate members, and thus used in the flotation of 
this $500,000,000 bond deal. It is disquieting that these great 
life insurance concerns of Wall Street persist in maintaining a 
singular reticence on this important question. 

The Equitable is a proprietary company, the sole property 
of one man^ who bought it on June 13th from Mr. J. Pierpont 
Morgan. This man is General T, Coleman du Pont, whose for- 
tune comes from the manufacture of powder, of which a rich 
harvest has been sent to the Allies since the war in Europe began. 
Three powerful trustees represent Mr. du Pont in the manage- 
ment of the Society — three men whom he has so far retained since 
he bought control of the property. 

These trustees elect the directors of the Society, of whom 
there are, I believe, fifty or so. So it may well be imagined what 



WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? 113 

power is exercised by these three men, who hold in their hands, 
so to speak, $525,000,000 of the savings of the American people. 

The first of these trustees is former Judge Morgan J. O'Brien, 
a gentleman of probity and integrity, against whom no objec- 
tions have been raised. 

The second trustee of the Equitable is Mr. Lewis Cass Led- 
yard. Mr. Ledyard is an old Morgan lawyer. He is director in 
the United States Trust Company, one of the syndicate partici- 
pants in the Morgan bond loan. 

He is now (October, 1915) on trial in the Federal Courts of 
this city, charged with violation of the Sherman Law, in the 
scandalous New Haven case, he having been a director of that 
railroad when the Elder Morgan "financed "it. 

A trustee of the Equitable, the custodian of such a volume of 
the public savings, should be, as Caesar's wife, above suspicion. 
He was a visitor in the Morgan library on that eventful night of 
September 11th. In the present circumstances Mr. Ledyard is 
absolutely disqualified from being an Equitable trustee, and 
should be at once removed. 

The third trustee is Joseph H. Choate, who has reached an 
extreme age — eighty-three years. As a result of education and 
association, his tendencies are vehemently English. 

Mr.- Choate, at the dinner of the Pilgrims to the foreign 
bankers, held at Sherry's on October 1st, displayed his intense 
pro-English feeling in the following words: "Lord Reading is 
going back home with $500,000,000 in his pocket. And now I 
hope that every man, woman and child in the United States, 
who has got a hundred dollars, will invest it in this loan, and 
what 's more, I hope that this is only the first instalment. ' ' 

And this, despite the fact that Sir George Paish had said 
that if England kept on expending her resources, she would have 
to suspend specie payments and tell the world she could no longer 
pay her debts. 

Is it to be supposed in the circumstances that Mr. Choate has 
any more regard for the savings of the Equitable policyholders 
than he has for the savings of every man, woman and child in 
this country? 

Mr. Choate is certainly not qualified to remain longer a trus- 
tee of the Equitable, a custodian of the public's savings. 

Otherwise the situation in the Equitable is similar to that 



114 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

which prevails in the Mutual Life. Many Equitable directors 
are also directors of the banks and trust companies which are 
participating in the Morgan loan syndicate. 

C. B. Alexander^ Equitable Life director, is also director of 
the Equitable Trust Company — member of the Morgan synuicate. 

Henry W. de Forest, Equitable Life director, is also director 
of the Metropolitan Trust Company, United States Mortgage & 
Trust, National Bank of Commerce — all members of Morgan's 
War loan syndicate. 

E. B. Thomas, Equitable Life director, is also director of the 
United States Mortgage & Trust Co. — member of the Morgan 
war loan syndicate. 

Valentine B. Snyder, Equitable Life director, is also director 
of the Guaranty Trust Company, National Bank of Commerce — 
both members of the Morgan war loan syndicate. 

I would advise those policyholders of the Equitable who have 
written to me, that they address General T. Coleman du Pont, 
asking him to remove JMessrs. Choate and Ledyard from their 
trusteeships. They should remember, however, that General 
du Pont, as sole owner of the Society, cannot be compelled to 
execute these removals unless he wishes to do so. 

However, the request should also be made upon General 
du Pont, that if any of the Equitable millions are on deposit with 
the banks and trust companies in the Morgan syndicate, they 
should at once be withdrawn, and in this General du Pont can 
be compelled to take action. 

THE CASE OP THE METROPOLITAN LIFE 

We are in receipt of the following communication from Mr. 
John R. Hegeman, President of the Metropolitan Life: 

Tpie Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 

John R. Hegeman, President. 

New York, October 18, 1915. 
Dear Sir : — Replying to your favor of the 16th inst. This 
Company is prohibited by the laws of this State from investing 
in securities in countries in which it does not do business. It 
does not do business in Great Britain or on the Continent of 
Europe. Yours truly, 

(Signed) John R. Hegeman, PrmtZcwi. 



WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? 115 

We see that Mr. Hegeman also ignores completely the ques- 
tion whether the company of which he is the proprietor has on 
deposit with the banking institutions of the Morgan underwriting 
syndicate any of the millions which his policyholders have en- 
trusted to his care. This question, so vital to them, must be 
answered ; all the more since, as we have seen, Mr. Hegeman 
was one of those who went to the Morgan library on the night 
of September 11th. 

Conditions in the Metropolitan Life also resemble those in 
the Mutual and Equitable companies. Many of the trustees are 
also officers or directors of the banks and trust companies making 
up the syndicate underwriters to the Morgan loan. 

Haley Fiske, Vice-President of the Metropolitan, is also trus- 
tee of the Metropolitan Trust Company — member of the Morgan 
syndicate. 

Robert W. de Forest, director of the Metropolitan Life, is also 
director of the New York Trust Company — member of the Mor- 
gan syndicate. 

Otto T. Bannard, Metropolitan Life director, is also President 
of the New York Trust Company — member of the Morgan syn- 
dicate. 

Albert H. Wiggin, Metropolitan director, is also President of 
the Chase National Bank, director Bankers' Trust, director 
Guaranty Trust, director National Bank of Commerce — all mem- 
bers of the Morgan war loan syndicate. 

I would advise the policyholders of the Metropolitan Life to 
address Mr. Hegeman on this question, so important to them, 
whether funds of the Metropolitan are on deposit with any of 
the Morgan syndicate banks, of which so many of his directors 
are officers and directors. 

THE CASE OP THE NEW YORK LIFE 

We publish the following reply from the Second Vice-Presi- 
dent of the New York Life : 

New York Life Insurance Company 

346 & 348 Broadway, New York 

Office of Second Vice-President 

October 19, 1915. 
Dear Sir: — We are in receipt of your communication of the 
16th instant. 

The matter to which you refer has never been presented to 



116 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

our Finance Committee. The policy of this Company has always 
been to invest only enough in foreign securities to maintain our 
reserve requirements in foreign countries according to law. We 
have no reason to believe that the investment policy of the Com- 
pany in this respect will be changed by our Finance Committee. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) John C. McCall, 

Second Vice-President. 

The reply of Mr. McCall can scarcely be regarded as satis- 
factory, since he also completely ignores the query whether his 
company has its surplus funds on deposit with the Morgan syndi- 
cate underwriters of the $500,000,000 to the Allies. Conditions 
in this company also resemble those of the Mutual, Equitable and 
Metropolitan Life companies. Directors of the company are also 
directors of the banks and trust companies in the Morgan syndi- 
cate. 

John G. Milburn, New York Life director, is also director in 
the National Park Bank — member of the Morgan syndicate. 

A. Barton Hepburn, New York Life, director, is also Chair- 
man Chase National Bank, director Bankers' Trust Company, 
director First National Bank — all members of the Morgan war 
loan syndicate. 

I must advise the policyholders of the New York Life to insist 
upon a definite reply to the question whether the funds are being 
held on deposit in any of the Morgan syndicate banks, where they 
would undoubtedly be used for the purposes of the $500,000,000 
loan. The New York Life is a mutual company, and its policy- 
holders are entitled by law to know what the officers, their em- 
ployees, are doing with their savings and surplus. 

THE PRUD'ENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY 

We are in receipt of the following reply from the Prudential : 
Forrest F. Dryden, President 

The Prudential Insurance Company op America 
Home Office, Newark, New Jersey 

October 11, 1915. 
Dear Sir: — In answer to your letter of October second, I 
would say that The Prudential Insurance Company of America 
does not now own, and has never held, any securities of any 
European country. 



WHO IS USING OUR LIFE INSURANCE FUNDS? 117 

The Prudential is forbidden by law to invest in the securities 
of any country where it is not doing business, and it is not 
operating in any European country. 

I remain, Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Forrest F. Dryden, 

President. 

I wish to reassure the anxieties of the Prudential policy- 
holders. I REGARD THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY AS SAT- 
ISFACTORY. THE PRUDENTIAL HAS NO AFFILIA- 
TIONS WITH THE MORGAN WAR LOAN SYNDICATE. 

THE travelers' INSURANCE COMPANY 

We are in receipt of the following reply from the Travelers : 

The Travelers ' Insurance Company 
Sylvester C. Dunham, President. 

Hartford, Conn., October 18, 1915. 

The Travelers is a stock company with a capital and surplus 
of over $13,000,000, by which its obligations to its policyholders 
are abundantly secured, in addition to the legal reserves required 
for that purpose. It does not bear the same relation to its policy- 
holders that is borne by a mutual company, but I do not for 
that reason deny the right of policyholders to inquire for and 
receive information respecting the company's investment policy, 
which has always been extremely conservative as the investments 
of a life insurance company should be. 

The specific inquiry in yours of the 15th relates to the pur- 
chase of the Anglo-French bonds about to be issued. 

The Travelers will not invest in them because it is its well- 
settled policy to invest its resources in the states and communities 
from which it derives its premium income. The Travelers trans- 
acts no foreign business except in Canada, and following the 
practice noted, its investments are limited to the United States 
and Canada. In Canada it makes only suclT investments as are 
required by the laws of the Dominion for the maintenance of its 
reserves for that country. All the rest and the vast majority of 
its resources are invested in the United States. It is not neces- 
sary to go elsewhere for such securities as the Travelers requires, 
which are chiefly state, municipal and corporate bonds and first 
mortgages on real estate. 

'Signed) S. C. Dunham, 

President. 

The courteous reply from Mr. Dunham must be HIGHLY 
SATISFACTORY TO HIS COMPANY'S POLICYHOLDERS. 



118 WAR PLOTTERS OF "WALL STREET 

THE TRAVELERS HAS NO ALLIANCE WITH THE MOR- 
GAN WAR SYNDICATE. 



THE CASE OF THE HOME LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 

We are in receipt of the following telegram : 

Cincinnati, 0., Oct. 26. 
During our absence from city we noticed in recent issue that 
you have connected Home Life Insurance Company of New York 
with foreign war loans. This Company confines its business 
solely to United States and its investments to American securities. 
Under the law, companies which transact no foreign business are 
prohibited from investing in foreign securities of any nature. 
Please make this correction, as above publication has been the 
cause of much annoyance. 

W. A. R. Bruehl AND Son, General Manager. 

I regret personally that this publication has been of annoy- 
ance to Mr. Bruehl, but I have no correction to make. I 
emphasize and repeat: Messrs. William A. Nash and Francis L. 
Hine, directors of the Home Life, attended the conference in the 
Morgan Library on the night of September 11th. Mr. Hine is 
closely identified with many banks that are syndicate partici- 
pants in the Anglo-French loan. 

I fear Mr. Bruehl has sent his telegram to the wrong address. 
He should send it to the President of the Company, and ask him 
to issue an unqualified denial that any surplus funds of the Home 
Life are on deposit in any of the Morgan banks participating in 
the Anglo-French loan. 

When men and women address me from every section of this 
country, ashing me to advise them in safeguarding their savings 
in the life insurance companies, on tvhich they depend as a 
provision for the future of themselves and their families, I cannot 
conscientiously advise them to place confidence in companies 
ivhose managing directors are close associates of J. Pierpont 
Morgan in his syndicate operations. What Morgan management 
means, ive have seen in the N^iv Haven. Such life insurance 
companies must clear themselves hy unequivocal statements that 
not a dollar of their policyholders^ money is being used for 
syndicate participations in any of the Morgan syndicate hanks. 



XII 

IS WALL STREET USING SAYINGS BANK DEPOSITS IN 
SECRET LOANS TO RUSSIA, FRANCE AND ENGLAND? 

Probably nothing has so accentuated the growing distrust of 
Wall Street throughout the country as the recent revelations that 
many of the great savings banks of New York City were again 
keeping vast sums of their "surplus funds" on deposit with the 
Morgan banks and trust companies, whose officers were using 
these tremendous accumulations of the people 's savings in wide- 
spread syndicate operations. 

A sentiment, peculiar and distinctive, hedges about the 
moneys deposited in savings institutions. These sums represent 
the self-denial of families, thrift, frugality — many of the best 
qualities of human kind. This fact is recognized by the State, 
which has sought for many years to so safeguard the savings of 
the public that they should be immune to any of the dangers the 
human mind could foresee. The State strictly imposes on the 
officers of such institutions, the mandate to invest their funds 
only in certain classes of the safest securities. Every few years 
these laws are revised to enforce greater care in the handling of 
the funds of savings banks. 

These precautions are taken to prevent the use of the public 
savings by reckless and unscrupulous gamblers. But such is 
human ingenuity, when whetted by cupidity, that laws fail of 
their purpose where vast sums of money on public deposit are 
concerned. So we see that to-day, again, the Wall Street bankers 
are burying their arms to the elbows in the funds which thrift 
and self-denial have accumulated. 

It is self-evident that the savings banks have no right to 
maintain these huge "surplus funds." The deposit in Wall 
Street banks of immense sums is merely an evasion of the banking 
laws. The funds in question should be invested in safe securities 
as ordered by the banking laws of the State. They should not 
be permitted to accumulate in the great reckless gambling insti- 
tutions of Wall Street. 

119 



120 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

What is being done with them there 1 At this very time they 
are being used to make call loans on the dangerously inflated 
war stocks ; they are being used in the flotation of the hazardous 
$500^000,000 loan to the Allies ; they are being used more secretly 
in individual loans to Russia, France and England. 

It is a difficult matter for the public to realize how their 
safely guarded savings can come into the hands of the great 
banking group of Wall Street, that has been guilty of the many 
great financial evils from which this 'country has suffered. In 
order to gain a clear comprehension of this matter it is necessary 
to observe the intermediaries in these transactions, the men who 
act as the connecting links between the savings banks on the one 
hand, and the syndicate banks and trust companies of the Morgan 
group on the other. 

It seemed a dreadful thing to contemplate that men of reputed 
standing in New York should be conscienceless enough to use the 
funds entrusted to their care by hundreds of thousands of 
families, in Wall Street's speculative gamble *in loans to half- 
bankrupt foreign countries, to facilitate the sale of war muni- 
tions. So the editor of this publication first wrote a letter to 
the savings banks of New York telling the heads of those insti- 
tutions of the floods of inquiries that 'had reached this office 
from depositors who had been made uneasy by the alarming 
rumors afloat, and asking them if they would not issue statements, 
whether their funds were being used directly or indirectly in the 
foreign loans, and whether they had on deposit with the Morgan 
banking syndicate any of the money of their depositors which, in 
that case, could be used in the Anglo-French $500,000,000 loan, 
or the less public loans that are now^ being made by the syndicate 
to Russia, France and England in the form of ninety-day accept- 
ances, renewable at stated periods. 

THE CASE OF THE EXCELSIOR SAVINGS BANK 

One of the first letters received was the following : 
Excelsior Savings Bank 
Corner 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue 

New York, Oct. 22, 1915. 
Dear Sir: 

In reply to your inquiry of October 21st, I beg to advise you 
that savings banks in the State of New York are, by the Banking 



LOANS TO RUSSIA, FRANCE AND ENGLAND 121 

Laws of the State, permitted to invest deposits only in securities 
designated by such laws. The securities referred to by you in 
your communication are not among them. 

We have not inquired of the different hanks and trust com- 
panies, ivhere we keep on deposit our reserves, whether they have 
participated in the Anglo-French loan or not. We would not 
keep our deposit in institutions where we did not have entire 
confidence in their ability to invest their money safely, and to 
the best advantage. If we did not have this confidence, we would 
withdraw our deposits, and if the depositor in any savings hank 
has not confidence in the managernent of the institution, he should 
close his account. 

Yours truly, 

(Signed) William J. Roome, 

President. 



I must confess that when this letter was turned over to me 
I read it with a feeling of distress at its tone of flippancy. I had 
heard the many stories now current, of the presidents of savings 
banks, when approached by depositors who had become worried 
over the banking situation, refusing to give them any assurances 
how their savings were being used, and bluntly telling them to 
withdraw their accounts if they were not satisfied. I had heard 
in particular the one story of the New York savings bank Presi- 
dent, who actually told his inquiring depositors that, if they 
withdraw their accounts, he would foreclose 5,000 mortgages on 
the homes of American citizens if they objected to the use of their 
money in a foreign war loan. These stories seemed incredible 
to me, for in all my experience in the banking world, I had never 
encountered their like. In the past days nothing could exceed 
the courtesy and personal sympathy with which the bank official 
met his inquiring depositor. I can account for this change that 
has come over the New York bankers only by the pro-foreign 
influence that has been infused into the banking world since the 
advent of the present Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. 

Mr. Roome lightly writes that he does not know whether the 
banks or trust companies in which he keeps his bank's reserves, 
have participated in the Anglo-French loan. The reserves in his 
bank are intended to safeguard the savings of his depositors. 
Certainly, he, as President, should be keenly alive as to what is 
being done with such reserves, whether they are being loaned on 
war stocks, used in the flotation of the Anglo-French bonds, or 



122 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

in the ninety-day advances to the Russian and French govern- 
ments. 

I shall here give Mr. Roome the information of which he 
pleads ignorance, namely, the banks and trust companies of the 
Morgan syndicate, engaged'in the transactions I have enumerated 
above : 

the morgan syndicate 

American Exchange Na- Liberty National Bank 

TioNAL Manhattan Company 

Bank op America Mechanics ' and Metals ' Na- 

Bank of New York tional Bank 

Chemical National Bank Merchants ' National 

Chase National Bank National Bank op Commerce 

First National Bank National City Bank 

Hanover National Bank National Park Bank 

Importers' and Traders' Na- Seaboard National Bank 

TIONAL ■ United States Mortgage and 

Irving National Bank Trust Co. 

Bankers' Trust Company Farmers' Loan & Trust 

Equitable Trust Company Company 

Guaranty Trust Company Metropolitan Trust Company 

Title Guarantee and Trust Union Trust Company 

Company United States Trust Com- 

Central Trust Company pany 

Mr. Roome, if you have your reserves on deposit in any of 
the above institutions, you may now know that they are being 
used in the Morgan syndicate flotations and the loans to the 
warring nations of Europe. I do not know how close a study 
you make of banking matters, but, in view of your expressed 
blind confidence in the institutions in which you keep your 
reserves, I would call to your attention the statement only re- 
cently made by Sir George Paish, the financial authority of the 
British Empire that, if Great Britain keeps on spending money 
as she is doing, she may have to suspend specie payments and 
tell the world she is unable to pay her debts. I would also call 
your attention to the statement more recently made by Lord 
Charles Beresford, that England is headed toward bankruptcy. 

In view of these warnings by Englishmen of prominence, Mr. 
Roome, do you not think it would perhaps be wise if you were to 
inquire what is being done with your reserves? You say your 
depositors should have confidence in your management, or close 



LOANS TO RUSSIA, FRANCE AND ENGLAND 123 

their accounts. But surely, some assurances are due them. Must 
they have "blind" confidence in your management? 

Many of your depositors have addressed inquiries to me con- 
cerning the attitude your bank has adopted toward loans to 
foreign and warring nations. I feel a deep responsibility in 
answering the query of a man or woman regarding the safety 
of his or her life 's savings. Conscientiously I cannot advise such 
inquirers to have blind confidence in any bank official who 
refuses to tell them what he is doing with their money, and who 
tells them that if they don't trust him they should remove their 
accounts. 

This is a case, not for me, but for the Superintendent of the 
State Banking Department. 

THE CASE OF THE GREENWICH SAVINGS BANK 

We shall next consider the following letter from the head of 
the Greenwich Savings Bank : 

The Greenwich Savings Bank 

(Incorporated 1833) 

246 and 248 Sixth Avenue, Borough of Manhattan 

New York, Oct. 22, 1915. 
My dear Sir : 

In reply to your letter of inquiry of October 21st I would 
say that no savings bank in the State of New York is authorized 
by law to invest in either the Anglo-French loan mentioned by 
you or in any foreign loan. 

I would also say, in answer to your second question, that any 
depositor calling here and producing his bank-book will undoubt- 
edly be satisfied with our replies to his inquiries. 

Yours very truly, 
(Signed) James Quinlan, 

President. 

The Greenwich Savings Bank bears one of the most honored 
names in New York City's banking world. It has been noted in 
the past as a model of sound and conservative management. Mr. 
Quinlan 's reply is kindly and courteous, but it is a matter of 
regret that he will not respond publicly to the second query 
addressed to him on behalf of his depositors. Savings bank 



124 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

depositors have informed me of the rebuffs they have met, in 
making personal inquiries at institutions on these questions. 
They are kept waiting in outer offices, in fruitless efforts to see 
the bank's officials, or else they are roundly scolded by the bank's 
paying tellers. 

Since Mr. Quinlan will not publicly reply to the question 
whether the Greenwich is keeping its surplus funds on deposit 
in the Morgan banking institutions participating in loans to 
Russia, France and England, I must lay the following informa- 
tion before my inquirers: 

TRUSTEES OF THE GREENWICH SAVINGS BANK 

Lowell Lincoln, director in the Mechanics & Metals National 
Bank: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

B. Aymar Sands, director in the New York Trust Company : 
— Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Bradish Johnson, director in the Equitable Trust Com- 
pany: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Gates W. McGarragh, President of the Mechanics & Metals 
National Bank; director in the Bankers' Trust, Guaranty 
Trust: — All Memhers of the Morgan Syndicate. 

William Woodward, President of the Hanover National 
Bank; director in the Union Trust Company: — Members of the 
Morgan Syndicate. 

Arthur Iselin, director in the Chemical National Bank; 
member of A. Iselin & Company: — Members of the Morgan Syn- 
dicate. 

John Harsen Rhoades, member of Ehoades & Company: — 
Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

E. S. Marston, President of the Farmers' Loan & Trust 
Company: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Albert H. Wiggin, President of the Chase National Bank; 
director in the Bankers' Trust Company, Guaranty Trust Com- 
pany: — Memhers of the Morgan Syndicate. 

In view of the fact that we have here nine trustees of the 
Greenwich Savings Bank, who are identified so prominently with 
seventeen Wall Street banking institutions, all of which are par- 
ticipating, under J. Pierpont Morgan 's leadership, in the Anglo- 
French loan syndicate, is it not a reasonable question to have 



LOANS TO RUSSIA, FRANCE AND ENGLAND 125 

answered, whether any of the reserves are kept on deposit with 
the above-named banking institutions 1 

Personally, I think that a statement on this matter should be 
forthcoming promptly. All the more so in consideration of the 
following facts. Mr. John Harsen Rhoades, one of the trustees 
of the Grreenwich, on September 17th published an open letter in 
the New York Times, addressed to Dr. Charles J. Hexamer, 
President of the National German- American Alliance, in which 
he said : 

"While Americans cannot but be jealous of England's pres- 
tige in her control of the seas, I am bound to say that I am quite 
satisfied with the way in which she has exercised that control. 
As a banker and a citizen, I see no reason why we should not 
loan the Allies such money as they desire, without collateral, for 
ten years at five per cent." 

I was astounded when I read that statement, coming from 
Mr. Rhoades, who has occupied so honorable a position in the 
banking world, and whose name has been so strongly identified 
with the Greenwich Savings Bank for many years. I cannot 
understand how Mr. Rhoades, as a banker and a citizen, can be 
satisfied with the way in which England has exercised her control 
of the seas. In that he stamps with his approval the confiscation 
of $15,000,000 in American meat cargoes, in violation of the 
Declaration of London. He lends his approval to the tremendous 
financial and industrial losses which England has brought upon 
the South by her violations of international law in seeking to 
destroy American commerce. I cannot conceive how an American 
citizen can stand with foreigners against his own countrymen. 
I cannot conceive how a conservative banker can be willing to 
loan the Allies all the money they desire without collateral. 

When I read statements such as these from one of my coun- 
trymen, I do not believe that he is any longer qualified to be 
entrusted with the savings of the American people. 

We have seen that several of the trustees of the Greenwich 
Savings Bank are directors of the Guaranty Trust Company. In 
this connection, I quote the following lines from the financial 
page of the New York Times, of October 29th : 

Negotiations by France, Great Britain and Russia for separate 
credits are proceeding, though in the case of France and Great 



126 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Britain they are being held up pending action on the report 
carried home by the Anglo-French Commission. France is to 
get $15,000,000 through 90-day acceptances, for which she will 
pay a discount rate of 5 per cent., and Yi per cent, for acceptance 
or commission. These bills will be renewable for a year, making 
the total commissions paid 2 per cent, and the return to the bank- 
ing syndicate which will advance the money, 7 per cent. Russia 
has ohtained $5,000,000 from the Guaranty Trust Company on 
90-day bills, which are renewable five times, making their possible 
life a year and a half. It was understood in financial circles 
that this money cost tke Russian Government well over 7 per 
cent. Bond dealers are of the opinion that when the Anglo- 
French loan is distributed, the investment market will take a 
large amount of Russian bonds on a good interest basis. 

We see here that the syndicate members are making liuga 
profits, ''well over 7 per cent." in the case of Russia, which is 
paying bankrupt's toll. The bankers who make these profits are 
not risking their own money. They are risking in these foreign 
ventures THE MONEY PLACED ON DEPOSIT WITH 
THEIR INSTITUTIONS. 

Hotv many millions of savings hanh deposits are being used in 
these great gambling transactions? 



THE CASE OF THE UNION DIME SAVINGS BANK 

I next submit the following letter : 

Union Dime Savings Bank, 
701 Sixth Avenue, Corner 40th Street 

New York, N. Y., October 21st, 1915. 
Dear Sir : 

Replying to your favor of the 20th inst., I would say that 
this bank has not participated either directly or indirectly in the 
Anglo-French loan. Yours very truly, 

(Signed) A. P. Kinnan, President. 

Mr. Kinnan 's letter is one of the few satisfactory replies 
received, since it undoubtedly implies that none of the reserves 
of the Union Dime are being used in the Morgan banks of Wall 
Street for their syndicate operations. 



LOANS TO RUSSIA, FRANCE AND ENGLAND 127 



the case of the bank for savings 

The Bank for Savings 
In the City of New York, 280 Fourth Avenue 

October 22, 1915. 
Dear Sir: 

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 20th 
inst.y and to say that I should regret it exceedingly if any of the 
depositors of this bank were apprehensive as to the safety of their 
money or the soundness of the institution. There is absolutely no 
occasion for any such fear. Any such of our depositors who may 
make inquiries of you kindly refer to the bank, which is the place 
for them to seek and get all the information to which all depos- 
itors are entitled. Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Walter Trimble, President. - 

Mr. Trimble's sympathetic letter is deeply appreciated. We 
have received, perhaps, more inquiries from depositors of the 
Bank of Savings than from any other savings institution in 
New York City. I would therefore advise them to take advan- 
tage of the generous offer of the President, and place before him 
the following facts: 



trustees of the bank for savings 

August Belmont, director in the National Park Bank; mem- 
ber of August Belmont & Company: — Memhers of the Morgan 
Syndicate. 

C. S. Brown, director in the Title Guarantee & Trust Com- 
pany, United States Mortgage & Trust: — Members of the Morgan 
Syndicate. 

Henry W. de Forest, director in the Metropolitan Trust 
Company, National Bank of Commerce, United States Trust 
Company: — All members of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Charles A. Peabody, director in the Farmers' Loan and 
Trust, Guaranty Trust, National Bank of Commerce: — All mem- 
bers of the Morgan Syndicate. 

James S. Alexander, President of the National Bank of 
Commerce, director in the Bankers' Trust Company: — All mem- 
bers of the Morgan Syndicate. 

George F. Baker, Jr., Vice-President and director in the 



128 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

First National Bank, director in the Chase National Bank: — All 
members of the Morgan Syndicate. 

I reproduce these interlocking directorates only for the guid- 
ance of the depositors of the Bank for Savings, and in full 
confidence that the President of the savings bank will give them 
the assurance that no funds of his institution are on deposit in 
the Morgan syndicate institutions mentioned. 

the east river savings institution 

The East River Savings Institution 
291-293-295 Broadway 

New York, Oct. 21, 1915. 
Dear Sir : 

Your communication of the 20th instant just received, and in 
reply we beg to say that this institution is purely a savings bank 
and under the law we are prohibited from investing in the char- 
acter of securities you mention. 

Very truly yours, 
The East River Savings Institution. 

(Signed) D. S. Ramsay, President. 

It is a matter of regret that Mr. Ramsay was not more explicit 
in his statement, and did not give the assurance that any of the 
reserves of his institution were being used by the Wall Street 
group in their syndicate operations. But, with one or two doubt- 
ful exceptions, there is not much evidence that any of the trustees 
are identified with the Morgan syndicate operations. 

the MANHATTAN SAVINGS INSTITUTION 

The Manhattan Savings Institution 
644 and 646 Broadway, Corner Bleecker Street 

New York, October 22, 1915. 
Dear Sir: 

In reply to your favor of the 21st inst. I beg to advise you 
that the bonds you mention are not legal investments for New 
York savings banks. 

Very truly yours, 
(Signed) Joseph Bird, President. 

Mr. Bird ignores the question whether any funds of his insti- 
tution are on deposit with the Morgan banks of Wall Street. In 



LOANS TO RUSSIA, FRANCE AND ENGLAND 129 

the circumstances I must advice inquirers that I can give them 
no assurances in this respect with regard to this institution. 
However, it is only just to call attention to the fact that the 
composition of the Board of Trustees gives no evidence of affilia- 
tion with the Morgan banks. 



GERMAN SAVINGS BANK, FOURTEENTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY 
GERMAN SAVINGS BANK, BROOKLYN 

These are the only savings banks in New York (Manhattan) 
that have made public frank statements that they will not permit 
the use of any of their reserve funds by the syndicate banks of 
Wall Street, in syndicate operations in behalf of foreign loans to 
the warring countries of Europe. 

It is a matter of surprise to this publication that many of the 
heads of the leading savings bank institutions of New York have 
declined to make any reply to the queries addressed to them on 
behalf of their depositors. Among these we note : 

THE BOV^ERY SAVINGS BANK 

In the list of trustees of the Bowery is Mr. Stephen Baker, 
director in the Bankers' Trust Company: — Memher of the Mor- 
gan Syndicate. 

Robert M. Gallaway, President of the Merchants' National 
Bank: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

William A. Nash, trustee of the Title Guarantee and Trust 
Company: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Another institution regarding which we have had many 
queries from our readers is the 

seaman's BANK FOR SAVINGS 

Among its trustees are President Daniel Barnes, director 
in the Mechanics' and Metals' National Bank: — Memher of the 
Morgan Syndicate. 

P. A. S. Franklin, director in the American Exchange Na- 
tional Bank: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Edward W. Sheldon, President of the United States Trust 
Company: — Memher of the Morgan Syndicate. 

Samuel Sloan, director in the Farmers' Loan and Trust 



130 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

Company, National City Bank: — Members of the Morgan Syndi- 
cate. 

V. EvERiT Macy, director in the Mechanics' and Metals' Na- 
tional Bank, trustee in the Union Trust Company: — Members of 
the Morgan Syndicate. 

It cannot be too strongly impressed upon these custodians of 
the public savings that they do not otvn the money which their 
depositors place in their institutions. State and Federal laws 
only too clearly show that they merely represent their depositors, 
whose interests they must guard, and to whom they must render 
strict accounting as to the handling of their money. 

We counsel patience to those ivho have ivritten letters to us 
regarding these savings banks in which they have deposited their 
funds. We advise them not to ivithdraiv their deposits, at least 
not before interest dates, since the banks woidd only reap the 
benefit of such steps. We promise them that we shall not let 
this matter rest, that in the end these gentlemen shall be com- 
pelled to acknowledge to their depositors just what disposition 
they are making of the savings the public has confided to their 
care. 



XIII. 

THE GREAT NEWS CONSPIRACY— HOW UNSCRUPU- 
LOUS NEWSPAPER OWNERS, AT THE BEHEST 
OF WALL STREET, DELIBERATELY DECEIVED 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 

A PRAYER IN BROADWAY. 

One frosty winter afternoon, — it was January i9th, 1904, — a 
small group of persons assembled on the triangle in Forty-second 
Street, that separates Broadway from Seventh Avenue. Sud- 
denly all heads were bared. An elderly man in clerical vestments 
began to speak, — I think most of us remember his resonant voice. 
It was the Rt. Rev. Henry Codman Potter, Bishop of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Diocese of New York : — 

"Almighty God, we beseech Thee to pour down upon this 
huilding and upon all the undertakings for which it has heen 
erected, Thy divine benediction. 

"Do Thou grant to those who are concerned in this enterprise 
Thy divine guidance and benediction, so that they may be enabled 
to do Thy will and speak Thy truth throughout this city and 
nation." 

It was the dedication of the Times Building. 

It is a peculiar trade, this newspaper business. It shapes the 
lives of members of its craft. Few of them ever make much 
money, and still fewer ever make a name. "We wash the dirty 
linen of the public," as Gaboriau had his detectives say. But 
newspaper men have an ideal. 

Yes, do not laugh, you who meet and deal with newspaper 
men, — you who hate them because they have antagonized you ; 
or you who use them for your own purposes, and laugh at them 
in your sleeves. Newspaper men have an ideal. And that ideal 
is, to publish the news. 

That phrase is a technical term with men of the craft. In 
using it, they signify, to publish the truth, *' Truth, truth and 

131 



132 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

no lie, though a whole celestial lubberland were the price of 
apostacy. ' ' 

In the old days in New York, we, who toiled at the craft, 
were very proud of our newspapers. They had their faults, 
heaven knows. Many were vulgar, and badly written, so much 
so as the New York World is to this day, hut none of them was 
venal. 

Then Mr. Adolph S. Ochs came here from some southern 
town and took hold of a moribund daily. Gifted with industry 
and intelligence, he built it up to a paying basis. It was a hard 
struggle for him at times, I believe, as in 1907, when he had to 
call in the assistance of some Wall Street bankers to finance him. 
But it was a good newspaper, and we all, I think, were glad to 
see him succeed. 

The circulation grew, the advertising multiplied, the paper 
inspired the public confidence and approval, and then suddenly 
Mr. Ochs saw himself at the head of a great organ that spelled 
power. Now often power works strange transformations in a 
man. 

In July, 1914, Mr. Ochs was publishing a series of articles 
on Russia, written by Kurt Aram, a German journalist. One of 
them told the terrible story of Warsaw. I doubt whether I shall 
ever forget it. One paragraph haunts me to this day : 

"You meet old and young men, dressed in the long caftan, 
their faces corpselike, their eyes like dying coals, running rest- 
lessly to and fro, like animals in a cage, to earn ten kopecks 
somewhere — anywhere — in order to buy an old herring and some 
mouldy bread, so that their wives and children may have some- 
thing to eat. From morning to night they pursue one idea, one 
hope only: to earn those ten kopecks." 

About ten days after this series ended, came the great war 
in Europe. Ten short days, and on the tenth, Ochs, who had 
been picturing the horrors of Russian rule, had suddenly become 
the friend and supporter of the Romanoffs, those cruel Czars, 
who wink at Jewish pogroms and smile as the Cossack knout 
lashes the backs of their unhappy people. 

OCHS, FRIEND OF THE CZAR 

He is still the Czar 's friend. He said the other day : ' ' Some- 
thing hieratic, symbolic, Byzantine clings to the Czar of all the 



THE GREAT NEWS CONSPIRACY 133 

Russias. A stimulation of patriotism, a half -religious fervor 
creeping through all that mighty mass of men and races, may 
be stirred thereby." 

What dreadful cataclysm can occur in a man's life, that in 
ten short days he is made to swing to the side of his father's 
persecutors, renounces his father 's people and his father 's blood ? 

Adolph S. Ochs had heard the voice of his Master and obeyed 
his Master's bidding. His Master is the Money Trust. 

In order to gain a clear conception of what Mr. Ochs has done 
during the past shameful year, we must inspect carefully the 
extraordinary table on page 134. 

Here is conclusive proof that for the last six months, Mr. Ochs 
has been printing in his New York Times a daily series of "fake" 
stories in furtherance of an ignoble end. ' ' The Turks are shoot- 
ing their German officers," and "There is panic in Constanti- 
nople." Nobody has been trying to deceive Mr. Ochs. These 
are all "special cable despatches" from his English correspond- 
ents in Athens, Geneva, Rome, Cairo, Copenhagen, Petrograd. 

But this fake English news. is directly contradicted by the 
truthful reports sent in by the neutral American correspondents 
of the American Associated Press. 

At the very time when the lying English correspondent says 
that the Turkish Sultan is fleeing from Constantinople, the 
Sultan gives an interview in his palace in Constantinople to the 
American Associated Press correspondent, praising in unmeas- 
ured terms the Germans, whom the English would have us 
believe are being ' ' shot by the Turks. ' ' 

Why does Mr. Ochs subordinate the honest American de- 
spatches of the Associated Press and play up the "fake" news of 
the venal British propaganda 1 If his correspondent in Paterson 
or Albany were to send in "fake" stories, he would discharge 
him on the spot. Why, then, does he not discharge his English 
correspondents, who have been sending him "fake" despatches 
for more than six months? 

Is this intelligent journalism? Yes, because it is corrupt 
journalism. 

These fakes are printed in the New York Times in order to 
sustain the waning British credit. England is bankrupt, and 
needs our money. The American people must not be permitted 
to realize that England has been defeated at the Dardanelles, or 



134 



AVAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 



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THE GREAT NEWS CONSPIRACY 135 

they would refuse to let Morgan, Britain's agent, take their 
money from the banks to pay the debts of England. So, after 
she has lost five warships at the Dardanelles, or has had 50,000 
men slaughtered by the Turks, we read the next day that "the 
Turks are shooting their German officers," so that we may be 
persuaded that England will win somehow, after all, because 
"there is a panic in Constantinople." 

And now, in the day when the bitter end has come to England, 
the truth is out at last, as it must always come out in the end, and 
we hear Lord Milner say in Parliament : ' ' Our campaign at the 
Dardanelles has failed. "We must withdraw our troops." So all 
this lying was in vain. What do the readers of the New York 
Times think of the paper 's owner, who so long deluded them ? 

In the days of Horace Greeley, Dana, or the elder Bennett, 
public opinion was molded by means of the old-fashioned edi- 
torial. But the news columns were held sacred. Now in the days 
when newspapers are ruled by international bankerSj public 
opinion is poisoned by news corrupted and faked at the fountain 
source, and sent out from Athens, Rome, Geneva, Cairo, Copen- 
hagen, Petrograd. Unscrupulous financiers make their coin by 
duping their fellow-countrymen. 

AMERICAN JOURNALISM DEGRADED 

To this depth of degradation has American journalism sunk ! 

Mr. Ochs, himself, is not deceived. He is an intelligent man, 
and not so thoughtless as the men who manage what old Mayor 
Gaynor used to dub "the rag-bag newspapers." Ah, how simple- 
minded are these, and how cunning are the others ! 

Mr. Ochs, do you recall the words the aged Bishop who spoke 
that day when you bared and bowed your head as he blessed your 
building in Forty-second Street ? 

"Almighty God, we 'beseech Thee to grant to these men Thy 
divine guidance and benediction, so that they may he enabled to 
do Thy will amd SPEAK THY TRUTH." 

Mr. Ochs, that prayer to God has been unheard. 

The New York Times, in its despatches edited by the London 
Censor, has tried to make us believe that neutral countries, like 
Sweden, are hostile to the Germans. It quotes alleged extracts 
from Sweden's government organ, the Stockholms Tidningen, to 
convey this impression. 



136 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

A month or so ago, I sent to Mr. Ochs an editorial from the 
Stockholms Tidningen, in which this grave charge was made :— 

"As concerns England, it has lately exercised a peculiar fc:''m 
of influence which one may characterize as worse than criminal, 
since it is so idiotic. A very well known advertising bureau in 
London, G. Street & Co., one of His British Majesty's representa- 
tives in the Board of Trade, offers to pay for the insertion in our 
editorial columns of accusations against the Germans, which it 
has agreed to distribute. . 

''For Swedish newspaper men it is a sad disillusionment to 
witness in such quarters a belief that they can shape newspaper 
opinion by such methods. ' ' 

I called the attentio*n of Mr. Ochs to this editorial, since it 
explained why truthful Associated Press despatches are contra- 
dicted by English correspondents in Athens, Geneva, Rome, 
Cairo, Copenhagen, Petrograd. There, newspapers have accepted 
the money of the British propagandists, which was indignantly 
refused by Swedish journalists. 

But Mr. Ochs ignored my communication. Why did he not 
publish it? I offered to show him the original Swedish news- 
paper that made the charges. What had he to fear from the 
publication of the truth ? 

Mr. Ochs, do you remember how, some months ago, 'you fea- 
tured the story of an English ship captain who 'arrived here and 
said: ''At my home in England are two golden-haired Belgian 
children, whose hands have been cut off by German Huns. Such 
fiendishness is inconceivable." Men in New York sent a cable 
despatch that day to the captain 's wife in England. She sent 
back word indignantly that there were no such golden-haired 
children at her home, nor had she ever heard of them. 

Did you then, ]\Ir. Ochs, print an editorial on this story, 
condemning the English dastard who would circulate so base 
a tale against a brave and noble race? NO, YOU WOULD "NOT 
FEATURE THE TRUTH. 

.Mr. Ochs, you published in extenso the Bryce charges of 
atrocities against the Germans, and the faked Armenian atrocities 
of this "atrocity expert"; you printed the Belgian charges of 
atrocities against the Germans, the French charges, even the 
Russian charges. But when the German Government printed its 
volume, with affidavits of the sickening enormities practised by 



THE GREAT NEWS CONSPIRACY 137 

Russians against the German populations of East Prussia, YOU 
SUPPRESSED THE BOOK! 

Why did you suppress it, Mr. Ochs? I shall tell the public 
why. You knew that the English at the very beginning of the 
war raised the atrocity cry because they feared the enormities 
their allies, the Russians, would commit and the barbarities their 
own Indian and African mercenaries are perpetrating in France 
to-day. They raised a false clamor to conceal the truth. You 
feared to publish the German charges against the Russians 
BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT BY THEIR PUBLICATION, 
AMERICAN SYMPATHY MIGHT BE AWAKENED FOR 
THE GERMAN RACE. 

ilfr. Ochs, in these acts, were you guided hy the benediction 
of that Almighty God to ivhom you prayed'that Winter's after- 
noon, that you might 6e .enabled to do His •will and speak His 
truth f 

Mr. Ochs, the people of this city trusted you and placed 
power in your hand. You have abused that power. Why have 
you introduced among us that hideous product of decadent hands, 
the engine that has ruined the British Empire and caused its 
downfall, the CLASS NEWSPAPER? The Class Newspaper is 
that dreadful orggn that secretly works in the interests of a 
corrupting class, and always against the best interests of the 
people. 

THE EXPATRIATE 

There was, many years ago, another man in New York City, 
who held great power in his hands through a newspaper which 
his ingenious father had built up. Every New Yorker knows to 
whom I refer — Mr. James Gordon Bennett, once well known in 
the gayest annals of our city. 

Mr. Bennett, like all the rest of us, has his good .qualities, and 
others that are not so good, — such as certain idiosyncracies he 
imposes on the management of his newspaper, one of these being, 
as I recall, that no employee of Jewish blood may work on the 
New York Herald. Mr. Bennett has no liking for the Hebrew 
race, and that seems strange when one considers it, since he 
derives his not inconsiderable income from the advertising of 
members of that very race. 'There is some old biological law, 
I believe, that accounts for the attraction of like for unlike. And 



138 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

that may account for the fact that Jewish merchants persist in 
patronizing a property whose owner will positively not have a 
Jewish employee. 

But no, — I am mistaken, and not for the world would I seek 
to do Mr. Bennett an injustice. There once was a Jewish em- 
ployee on the Herald. He was one of the men in the composing 
room. This fact was of great grief to one of Mr. Bennett's 
department managers, and he studied how^ to remedy this un- 
toward situation in the general office scheme of the Herald. It 
was learned, one day, I believe, that the Jewish compositor had 
remained out ten minutes too long for luncheon, or had violated 
some other office regulation, and he was promptly dropped. 

Mr. Bennett has very little fear for anyone, but there is one 
body of men for whom he has a wholesome respect, — and that is 
Big Six, the New York Union of compositors, who have a very 
strong organization. Big Six did not view with favor this dis- 
charge from the Herald of a man whose only dereliction was his 
racial or religious tie. A committee of Big Six took up this 
matter, and decided that Mr. Bennett must pay to his one-time 
compositor his full wages during his six weeks of absence, and 
reinstate him, the alternative being that the Herald Chapel would 
be called upon to walk out in a body unless this were done. 

And Mr. Bennett complied with the recommendations of Big 
Six. 

Mr. Bennett has some other peculiarities. He published some 
very unpleasant advertisements for some years, until the Federal 
Government admonished him sharply to desist. The circum- 
stances surrounding this affair became extremely distasteful to 
Mr. Bennett, and he went abroad to make his home in foreign 
lands. 

He became an expatriate. He makes his home in Paris, having 
conceived an immense fondness for the French race. And, in 
fact, I am convinced that France is the only country that Bennett 
loves to-day. 

The great war came, the French armies were defeated, the 
country was invaded and the land lies in waste and ruin. This 
has been a great sorrow to the owner of the Herald. A purpose 
grew in the heart of this expatriate, — he dreamed that, by the 
use of his power, he could rule the destinies of nations. He said 
to himself : " I shall save France. I shall make the United States 



THE GREAT NEWS CONSPIRACY 139 

fight for her. Hundreds of thousands of Americans may die, but 
France must be saved, if I have the power to save her. ' ' 

Mr. Bennett then began to publish inflammatory stories on 
the war, intended to awaken the hatred of his former countrymen 
against the Germans, just as he had once before published such 
stories against an ex-President of the United States. He used 
the same machinery, disgusting cartoons, and basely fabricated 
tales, in order to mislead men, and instil hatred into their hearts. 
And this is how he did it : — 



THE HERALD S CAMPAIGN OP HATE 

The sentiments of James Gordon Bennett^ who loves France 
better than he does Itis country or Jiis countrymen : 

Herald, July 16. — The United States* cannot permit 
France to be struck down, even -if we have to go to 
ivar ivith Germany to prevent it. 

Herald, May 10. — The naturalized citizen of German 
hirth or parentage, who sympathizes with the Kaiser, 
is a traitor to the United States.* 

Herald, May 20. — Professor Henderson of Yale, as a 
German sympathizer, has no right to claim America* 
as his country. 

Herald, May 11. — Worse things can happen to the 
United States than war. 

Herald, May 19. — Prepare for the worst possible con- 
tingency. 

Herald, May 30. — Sink any German vessel that attempts 
to leave New York. 

Herald, May 31. — Germany is a red-handed murderer. 

Herald, June 1.— Germany's hands are dripping with 
American blood. 

Herald, June 2.- — The American* people want no friend- 
ship with Germany. 

Herald, June 1. — Germany has invited her doom. 

There is a terrible place in Europe to-day, — a place more 

terrible than ruined cities, wasted countrysides, or battlefields 

where the bones of dead men lie bleaching. It is in France, on 



♦Who authorized Mr. Bennett to speak for Americans? 



140 WAR PLOTTERS OF WALL STREET 

the heights overlooking Lake Geneva, — Evain-les-Bains they call 
it, THE REFUGE OF EUROPE 'S GAY SET. 

American expatriates are there, indulging in extravagant 
revels, that rival, they say, those of Monte Carlo in other days. 
Among these expatriates I noticed the other day the name of 
Mr. Bennett. Yes, James Gordon Bennett was there, walking 
to and fro in the Casino Gardens, past the throngs of demi- 
mondaines who once dazzled the Paris race courses and the Bois. 
And as he walked, slowly walked, for he is an aged man, he smiled 
to himself at times, for he was waiting, waiting, to see his former 
countrymen plunged into Europe 's war. 

THE NESTOES OP NEW YORK JOURNALISM 

Here, then, we have the two Nestors of New York's jour- 
nalism. 
On the one hand — 

Adolph S. Ochs, of the New York Times. 
On the other 

James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald. 

I do not think these two men have been fair to the thousands 
of newspapermen of this country, who do the work that builds 
up the great newspaper properties, who toil the long hours, take 
all the harsh words and the hard blows, but working in the public 
interest in the furtherance of their ideal: — To publish the news. 
For Mr. Ochs and Mr, Bennett have not ''published the news." 
They have deliberately misled, with system and persistence, the 
American people, who are entitled to know the news. 

Among newspapermen, when one among them has disgraced 
his craft, it is customary to say: "He fouled our nest." 

Speaking on behalf of the conscientious newspapermen o^ my 
country, and I think I know their views, I feel that I must say 
to Mr. Ochs and Mr, Bennett : ' ' Gentlemen, you two have fouled 
our nest. ' ' 



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